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Obama's Green Plans Killing The Earth

Corn farmers love the ethanol program.  They are getting record high prices for their crops, they have found support industries developing strains of corn and types of equipment to substantially increase yields and they are big enough politically now to dictate to entire regions what ground will be planted.

Ethanol is really just distilled moonshine, with a chemical added to keep you from drinking it.  Same process as a mountain still, chemically treated and then added to your gasoline as part of the goofy idea that some how this is reducing "greenhouse gases".  And just to show you how little respect the "Greenies" have for your intelligence the must be laughing behind your back when you use the words "greenhouse gases" to picture something toxic.  Ever been to a greenhouse?  What gases?  Carbon dioxide which is given off by all living plants whether in a greenhouse or not?  The next time you use the term "greenhouse gases" to make a point about air pollution stop for a moment and savor the thought of how much of an idiot the "greenies" think you are.

So just how "green" is this ethanol program?  What you are about to read might surprise you.

The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.

Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.

But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.

As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.

Five million acres of land set aside for conservation - more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined - have vanished on Obama's watch.

Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.

Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can't survive.

The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.

"They're raping the land," said Bill Alley, a member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon pharmacy.

In some cases, such as its decision to allow wind farms to kill eagles, the administration accepts environmental costs because they pale in comparison to the havoc it believes global warming could ultimately cause.

Ethanol is different.

The government's predictions of the benefits have proven so inaccurate that independent scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases. That makes the hidden costs even more significant.

"This is an ecological disaster," said Craig Cox with the Environmental Working Group, a natural ally of the president that, like others, now finds itself at odds with the White House.

But it's a cost the administration is willing to accept.

Losing conservation land was bad. But something even worse was happening.

Farmers broke ground on virgin land, the untouched terrain that represents, from an environmental standpoint, the country's most important asset.

The farm industry assured the government that wouldn't happen. And it would have been an easy thing for Washington to check.

But rather than insisting that farmers report whenever they plow into virgin land, the government decided on a much murkier oversight method: Washington instead monitors the total number of acres of cropland nationwide. Local trends wash away when viewed at such a distance.

The Department of Agriculture began keeping figures on virgin land only in 2012 and determined that about 38,000 acres vanished that year.

But using government satellite data - the best tool available - the AP identified a conservative estimate of 1.2 million acres of virgin land in Nebraska and the Dakotas alone that have been converted to fields of corn and soybeans since 2006, the last year before the ethanol mandate was passed.[MyWayNews]

Still think that the plan is to improve our environment?  Or is it really just another example of the government being the enforcement arm of big business?

Guest Editorial Michael Reagan: Take Aim At The REAL Enemy

While we watch the S.S. Obamacare sink beneath the waves, and while we watch the White House explain why its signature legislative "achievement" is not the titanic disaster we all knew it would be, I have some advice for my fellow Republicans.

Shut up.

Quit shooting Cruz missiles at each other.

And take aim at the real enemy -- the Democrats and their awful agenda for America.

We can't blame John McCain, Lindsey Graham and the other anti-Ted Cruz senators for what they said or did during the government shutdown.

What they thought about defunding or delaying Obamacare -- or what they said to the media -- was irrelevant.

The only thing that really mattered was how those senators would have voted on the bills the House of Representatives sent over to the Senate.

And we can't blame them for not successfully defunding Obamacare when Harry Reid never even gave them a chance to vote on anything.

I'm not happy with McCain, Graham and a lot of other Republican senators in Washington who often speak and act like they've received brain transplants from members of The New York Times editorial board.

But I'm still 100 times happier with our least-conservative Republican senator than I would be with any Democrat that's out there.

Whatever their faults, McCain and the others saw the reality written on the wall. They knew Reid wasn't going to bring anything up for a vote that would jeopardize Obamacare. And they knew if he did, President Obama quickly would have vetoed it.

In the Republican House, it was the same story. Majority Leader John Boehner was blasted by conservatives but he did his best.

When he tried to explain the facts of life to the Tea Partiers in his caucus, they didn't believe him. Yet after that, Boehner still did everything the Republican suicide caucus asked him to do.

Everything Republicans have been saying about the dangers of Obamacare is right, but we can't keep attacking our own people.

The GOP is not big enough. We've always been a minority party. We can't afford to keep throwing our fellow Republicans under the bus, when we should be figuring out how to put more people on the Republican bus.

We Republicans need to wise up. We need to dismiss our circular political firing squad, get in a straight line, take aim at the real enemy and start blasting away.

We need to replace Reid, Chuck Schumer and every Democrat senator we can. Fighting among ourselves is not getting the GOP anywhere. Look at the last election.

The Tea Party sent up conservative candidates in primaries in Indiana, Nevada and Connecticut who beat Republican incumbents but then lost in the general elections. One of them was an ex-witch.

Now there's a real long-term winning strategy for the GOP.

If it's going to primary a Republican senator they think is insufficiently conservative, the Tea Party wing has to make sure its candidates can win in the fall elections.

Otherwise it's just being really stupid -- and we end up with a Democrat Senate and unstoppable legislative monstrosities like the Affordable Care Act.

If Republicans really want to change things for the better, if we really want to save America from the Democrats and Obamacare, we have to win back the Senate.

To do that, Republicans need to quit fighting each other, call off their civil war and start fighting the real enemy of freedom -- the Democrat Party.

The political reality is simple: The 2013 Senate is run by the Democrats. Harry Reid never brings up a vote that he disagrees with. And until Republicans take control of the Senate, nothing will change.

So don't blame Boehner or McCain -- or any of the Republicans in the House or Senate -- for the Obamacare fiasco. Blame Obama and the Democrats. And replace them.

Copyright ©2013 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of "The New Reagan Revolution" (St. Martin's Press). He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. Mike's column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Cari Dawson Bartley at [email protected].

The Problem With The GOP

EDITORIAL

I am a fourth generation Kentucky Republican, married into a strong civil war era Republican family and have held nearly office at every level in the Republican Party of Kentucky.  I cut my teeth on politics in the 60's, and 70's and 80's when republicans didn't stand a chance of winning in all but a few places in Kentucky.

I am proud to have been part of the effort to break the stranglehold the democratic party had on government in Northern Kentucky and to have helped elect a republican governor in 2003.  I have many  conservative friends in the TEA party who are trying to bring the GOP back to its senses and I have many conservative friends who have weathered the storms and battles and are a bit confused by what they see as the accelerating decline of the republican brand.

So let me add one opinion to the question:  What is the problem with the GOP?

First, there really is no GOP any more.  Oh sure, there is still a party, but little in the way of a clear definition of what it stands for.  Yes there is a platform, but it hasn't governed the behavior of elected officials for decades.  We announce a mission statement then let anybody who runs under our banner choose which parts, if any, they will adhere to  and to what degree they abide.

Second, we have permitted the "other side" to define us.  Ask anybody who is hanging on to the nation's safety net what they think of republicans and I suspect you will get a pretty unflattering answer.  How much of the population does this represent?  Nearly half, and quite frankly, the half that votes alot because their safety net depends on it.  They see republicans as representing the wealthiest in our nation, have no ability to reason through the "trickle down" theory of "job creation" and couldn't care less if millionaires have to pay more taxes.  Hunger and poverty and fear drives them, not tax cuts.

Third, we have allowed the "socialists" to shame us and to mobilize against us feeding off of the perception that we are "heartless".  Some of them really do care about the poor, the sick and the elderly, but a bunch more of these progressives at the top of the political food chain are using the compassion of their supporters to fundamentally transform America into a socialist state.  They know what they are doing and so do we, but we haven't found a way to beat them.

Fourth, we are now nominating a bunch of young, "me generation" TEA party kids who are  enamored by the concept of "Bitcoin" without any understanding of the abject panic that senior citizens live in every day facing the prospect that they will be forced to live on less in a world that costs more.  Sure, paying for somebody else's Grandma's cataract surgery seems like an unwelcome burden to the under 50 crowd, and of course they see no reason why we can't balance the budget by cutting "entitlements" the euphemism for senior citizen care.  But how many people do they know trying to make it on $800 per month?

The whole idea of using a computer is second nature to these kids.  They can't understand why everybody isn't like them.  I know many people who are trying to pay their rent, their utilities, buy food, pay for life saving prescription medicines, pay their transportation costs and get by on less than $800 per month.  They are too old, or infirm to start a new career and will  not live long enough to save for retirement.  They are already too close to or past retirement.  Their very lives depend on the safety net of Social Security and Medicare.  They simply cannot absorb increases in costs or cuts to benefits.

The GOP needs to stop letting the kids force their world on the rest of us.  The GOP needs to stop being the enforcement arm of big business.  The GOP needs to develop a much more populist message and in order to do that the GOP  needs to listen to "the people".

And the GOP needs to stop forcing every candidate to fend for themselves.  If this is going to be the party of political relevance it needs to start acting like a "party", not a name, a banner under which people run, an organization that hosts a convention but will not help good candidates raise money, refuses to jump into races like the Virginia Governor's race and needs to close ranks.  And yes, it needs to begin recruiting the right candidates who can win, but not those who can win and then abandon the party's conservative principles.

There must be rules governing membership.  Like any organization there must be consequences of not abiding by the party's rules.  Every person should be eligible to run for office, but in order to get the "party nomination" there must be some degree of "party control" else a simple switch of registration could have enemies of conservatism winning as republicans for the purpose of destroying the party from within.

And lastly, the GOP needs to stop trying to return America to a day gone by.  It's gone by.  Yesterday is over your shoulder.  The world has changed and Mayberry was fiction then and not likely to come back through the effort of the best intentioned among us.  We need to look around, take stock of what this nation has become and find a way to win the hearts and minds first of the people we may eventually get to vote for us in the future.

And the longer we pursue policies "the people" see as "heartless" the longer we will suffer losses.  The TEA party and the GOP can preach to and pass the collection plate among the choir all it wants, but the larger congregation should be our focus.  We need to look around the nation and see who our countrymen are.  We can't win souls until we get them to listen and they certainly won't listen if they don't believe we care.

What Would The TEA Party Say About Women's Rights?

We are constantly being told that the GOP is struggling to win votes among American women.  This suggests that the democrats have a better reputation among women voters for women's rights.  Now we hear of a shocking answer by Secretary of State John Kerry to a female reporters question on his trip to Saudi Arabia.

Following recent news of a Kuwait woman being arrested for driving her ill father to the hospital, in violation of the law there that prohibits women from driving cars, a reporter asked Kerry where he stood on the issue of the Saudis having the same rules in the larger context of women's rights.  Here was Kerry's response:

“It’s no secret that in the United States of America we embrace equality for everybody . . . [but] it’s up to Saudi Arabia to make its own decisions about its own social structure.”

As one commentator pointed out:

[T]he response was immediately noted by civil libertarians as coming off as remarkably relativistic and restrained. Yet these responses are clearly scripted on diplomatic trips. Women’s rights is not a question of “social structure.” That is how the Saudis view it. It is their religion and social structure that is cited for the medieval treatment of women. Equality is a human right that by definition transcends “social structures” and national preferences. Otherwise, racial and religious discrimination would be simply a matter of cultural tastes. [Turley]

I want you to re-read that again.  It was "civil-libertarians" who objected.  Aren't the "civil-libertarians" a big part of the TEA party?  And isn't the Ron Paul influenced TEA party decidedly "non-interventionist" when it comes to foreign policy?

So why would civil libertarians feel entitled to even comment on how another country treats its women?  Moreover, let's not forget that this is a democrat Secretary of State presumably representing our democrat president.  So tell me now, how is it that the democrats can claim the "women's vote" and the civil libertarins can complain like toothless dogs on a short heavy chain barking with no chance of biting, but the GOP with its strong record of standing up for women's rights is the party that has problems winning the women's vote?

Oh, yeah, I forgot.  The GOP thinks the government shouldn't pay to have baby girls suctioned apart or burned alive with chemicals or pulled out of the womb and stabbed in the brain.  It's all about that abortion thing isn't it?  You know, the FIRST civil right, the "right to life".

Libertarian Muslims Infiltrating TEA Party To Help Spread Sharia Law

I've used this analogy many times before.  Do you remember the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"?  In one scene the local sheriff has gathered a crowd of men around a platform trying to organize a posse.  After a while, a man in the crowd joins the sheriff on the platform and applauds the effort.

But then, before his very eyes, the man usurps the sheriff's effort at gathering a crowd and turns the discussion into a sales pitch for a new invention, the bicycle.  Pretty soon the entire crowd has lost interest in the sheriff's effort to get the bad guys and are enamored with the bicycle salesman.  The follow-up to that scene shows Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) riding around the house with Etta Place (Katharine Ross) on the handle bars to the sounds of B.J. Thomas singing Burt Bacharach's "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head."

I believe that the modern TEA party followed a similar incarnation.  A few good people gathered a crowd in order to go get the bad guys, the democrats who controlled Congress and gave us the Bailouts and the Stimulus Packages and who controlled both houses of Congress which was in lock step with a far left progressive President.

But soon, having gathered a crowd and gotten their attention, others jumped on the stage and usurped the momentum.  First it was Libertarians looking for a vehicle to propel Ron Paul forward.  Then it became the political parasites who needed jobs and lusted after attention who began chanting what the crowd wanted to hear.

Then the democrats and Obama saw a use for the TEA party and began to fan the flames of discontent with the help of their buddies in the media in an effort to divide the republican opposition to their plans for "transforming" America.

Now it's those who want to see Sharia law in America.

Tea Party circles in East Tennessee might seem an unlikely environment for launching a Muslim organization. Will Coley, a 31-year-old Tennessee native, Muslim convert and Tea Party activist did just that.

His one person outreach project to Tea Party conservatives and libertarians grew into the first national organization countering Islamophobia on the Right.

Their message: Islam is compatible with an anti-big government or libertarian philosophy. They do not denounce sharia, but defend it within a libertarian framework. 

"Our approach is different," says Coley. "We use principles within sharia like maqasid (primary goals) to show their connection with John Locke's principles of life, liberty and property."

After speaking with fourteen Tea Party chapters about Muslim beliefs on liberty and sharia (Islamic religious law code), twelve of them agreed to reject anti-Muslim appeals. They even publically supported a petition opposing a proposed "sharia ban" in Tennessee.

Coley's efforts drew the attention of members of the small but growing community of Muslim libertarians, especially after an initial article on the anti-Islamophobia website Loonwatch.com.[Illume Magazine]

I tried to warn you.  Be careful who is stirring your tea.

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Why Don't They Form Their Own Party?

Why Don't They Form Their Own Party?

EDITORIAL

TEA party republicans are not only bashing their fellow GOP'ers, they aren't supporting them financially either, says a report at POLITICO.  The National Republican Congressional Committee is doing well with its fundraising, but TEA party protesters like Thomas Massie and Justin Amash are out to hurt re-election efforts.

As I reported earlier, Massie bragged about how proud he was to learn that his idol, Ron Paul, had never contributed anything, zero dollars, to the republican effort in the House.  Though most House members are expected to donate in the six figure range, Massie has only donated $6,000.

It is quite clear that these folks not only do not want to play by the two party system they are engaged in a pattern of conduct clearly destined to do harm to the republican majority in the House of Representatives.

The election and re-election of republicans in the House is crucial to offsetting the otherwise absolute control of the government by Barack Obama's democratic friends.

Granted, the TEA party malcontents don't like the agenda or the behavior of the "establishment republicans" and have carved out a niche for themselves among Americans who feel the same way, but the fact remains that a strong GOP is the only check on a runaway progressive future for America and working inside the halls of Congress to weaken that line of defense suggests that these guys aren't really republicans at all.  In fact, their are the new RINO's.

As I have pointed out many times, the work these individuals should be concentrating on is developing a plan with details about how they will address the spending issues about which they so often complain.

While the President feels free to threaten that the TEA party plan is to impose draconian cuts to Medicare and Social Security in order to scare the most vulnerable in our nation, the TEA party needs to step up and address this issue squarely.  It is simply a fraud on the American people for them to say they are going to bring government spending to a halt in order to impose discipline.  What are they going to do away with and how much will it mean?

Take a look at this chart.  The only thing the Congress can do is to tinker within the range of "discretionary spending", or make cuts to the military budget or to cut deeply into Social Security or Medicare, exactly what the President is saying.

In other words the TEA party folks in Congress are building their entire brand around cutting government spending without being precisely clear about where they would make the cuts.  Sure, ending the days when the military was given a blank check to buy $100 hammers makes for a good anecdote in a stump speech, but those little tweaks don't among to a hill of beans when it comes to the size and scope of the spending.

Clearly Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest outlays next to the military.  And sure, raising the retirement age, ending future social security benefits for people now under 18, or other such proposals are good ways to reduce future expenses, but none of those things deal with the here and now.

Why these folks can't bring themselves to even say the words "increase revenues" is beyond me.  During the 2012 Congressional campaign every time I mentioned those words in the middle of a bunch of people drunk on TEA they immediately became enraged by the notion that any form of taxes was so terribly bad that even discussing them was the mark of the devil.

Well let's be adults here.  How in the hell do you think we pay our soldiers?  How in the hell do you think we build bridges, repair highways, maintain national monuments except with tax revenue?  How do these nit-wits in Congress think they get paid except with tax revenue?  So why do they let their brain numbed audiences shout down any discussion of increasing revenue?

Are they willing to let the people of the nation become so dumbed down as to think that all increases in revenue will result in tax increases on individuals?  What kind of public servant would let that happen?

Apparently the TEA party bunch will, and they are.

NO, increasing revenue DOES NOT mean raising taxes.  It can also be accomplished, as Ronald Reagan said, by improving the economy.  "A rising tide lifts all boats."

Why don't we hear plans for making the economic engine of America more productive?  Why are they so laser like focused on cutting spending that they can't imagine how the government could inspire more productivity, more spending by private industry on employees, equipment, building, development of new technologies or even helping to brand "Made in the USA" as once again the mark of the best products in the world?

How about using the power of the Federal Government to inspire industries to bring jobs back to the USA?  When we increase the number of people paying into OUR Treasury rather than a foreign treasury we increase revenue.

How about eliminating the IRS and the individual income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax?  Oh, the progressives will cry, but that will put more of a burden on poor people.  Seriously? When nearly half of the population pays no taxes and the top 1% pays about 18% of income taxes, we are going to let that kind of argument win the discussion about the fairness of taxes?

And how about just turning the subject of the conversation away from the sophomoric monotone of cutting spending and come up with a real plan, say, legislating away the power of a huge bloated bureaucracy to interfere with every aspect of our lives and taking the lid off of a nation where freedom and liberty were the only fuels needed to make us the greatest, most powerful and prosperous nation of individuals in the world?

Look, if these TEA party dunderheads want to keep you dumb so they can stay in office, why don't they go do it in their own party?  Why try to undermine the thin line of defense the GOP is holding against runaway progressives in this country?

And if they do form their own party they can even look back in history and choose a familiar name for themselves.  I suggest the Know-Nothing party.  There are more parallels than you might imagine.

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What, No Blame For TEA Party Over Shutdown?

Third Party Needed Says Majority Of Americans

Criticism Of McConnell Is Mind Boggling

Libertarian Amash Draws Primary Challenge

Criticism Of McConnell Is Mind Boggling

EDITORIAL

Headlines all across the nation exploded today with criticism leveled at Mitch McConnell for his role in the "shutdown" negotiations particularly the expansion of funding for a years old dam project on the Ohio River inserted in the late night bill and approved by a wide margin of 81-18 in the Senate 285-144 in the House.

Calling the funding increase the "Kentucky Kickback" and other equally ugly things blogs, newspapers and commentators from across the political spectrum are attacking Mitch, claiming that he failed to hold the line against the democrats and that he got a little pork for Kentucky as a payoff for surrender.  Have people lost all perspective on politics and reality?

First of all, as Mitch correctly pointed out, if you have questions about the dam funding, ask Diane Feinstein and Lamar Alexander the chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate energy and water subcommittee, respectively.  As reported by the Courier Journal:

Alexander said in a statement to Buzzfeed that the provision was required to safeguard $160 million in Army Corps of Engineers contracts for the dam. Alexander said he and Feinstein asked for the provision.

“It has already been approved this year by the House and Senate,” Alexander said.

The Olmsted project is one of the largest construction projects in the country, considered essential but way over budget.

Let's get this straight.  The TEA party bunch cries all over the place that they would like a limited government that does little more than provide a strong military, and builds interstate highways, bridges and dams.  A major construction project in one of the busiest corridors of commerce in the nation is sorely in need of replacement before the antiquated lock and dam system that has been outdated since 1988 fails completely.  The Senate waterways committee chaired by a democrat inserts a funding increase for a project which is already underway into the CR bill and McConnell is criticized for not stopping it?

The bill passed with 81 votes for cripesake!  How was he going to stop that?

And if the continued funding of a project which is under way already was necessary because of years of delays and funding uncertainties, who in their right mind would abandon it?  What the hell is wrong with you people?!

And let's get one more thing straight.  Even if Kentucky benefits from this funding, since when is a Senator NOT supposed to help his state?  Are you people dropping acid or something?

Look, the whole shutdown fiasco was a cesspool, but ask yourself.  Do you think Alison Lundergan Grimes or Matt Bevin could swim out of a cesspool with the kind of pearls in their teeth that McConnell got for Kentucky?  I mean, if the entire fight was about to go down to defeat it is a good thing to have a guy like McConnell up there helping Kentucky isn't it, considering that the democrats are in the majority?

Criticism of McConnell is mind boggling.  In fact the entire world of politics in Washington is like a brain eating amoeba, the longer it goes untreated the more we get close to a world of Idiocracy.

Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie and the others, get over yourself.  You didn't accomplish anything except get airtime for yourselves, disrupt the nation, and show once again how totally ineffective you are.

And those of you who continue to listen to those guys and jump on the "bash McConnell" band wagon at their invitation, let me suggest that this is going to be a very short ride.  Eventually the adults will take the keys away.

Until the GOP wins the White House and the Senate we need strong people in Washington who work FOR Kentucky, not some altruistic technicolor dreamworld image of a nation that has never, and will never be.

On Wednesday afternoon, Rand Paul defended Mitch McConnell in an interview with Terry Meiners on WHAS radio in Louisville.

"I would say Kentucky's very lucky to have Sen. McConnell," Paul said. "You need somebody who's willing to stand up for Kentucky."

I agree.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/16/2880106/mcconnell-takes-criticism-

from.html#storylink=cpy

Who Will Have The Balls To Seize The Moment In Congress?

The media is spinning away in favor of the Obama view of the world that a "default" is looming if the debt ceiling isn't raised tomorrow.  Rand Paul is trying to comfort the world by re-assuring everybody that we have enough tax revenue per month to pay our interest payment AND that paying it first is the law of the land.

Of course Jack Lew and others in the Obama camp respond by saying that even if we pay our interest we might default on other obligations and that more government programs might suffer.  Once again they are trying to scare grandma and the enslaved poor who got a taste of things the other day when by sheer coincidence (tongue in cheek) their EBT (food stamps) purchasing cards got shut off briefly. (I mean come on, if you don't think this was a test to see how much of a panic could be incited then you are not paying attention)

So here's the way to use Obama's plot against him.  He wants to take the public's mind off of anything that reflects badly on him or his administration.  I mean, what ever happened to the IRS scandal, the Benghazi investigation and his "red line" that Syria crossed in open defiance?

If Obama can do it, so can somebody in Congress that has a pair. How about using this moment to introduce legislation eliminating the IRS and the income tax and creating a more stable revenue stream by the Fair Tax method.  Oh of course there will be plenty of opposition, but if the debate suddenly turned from increasing debt and increasing job killing taxes to finding a way to improve the income to the government and make it more user friendly to the millions of Americans who hate the current system, why not seize the moment?

Worried that we might not have enough money to pay our obligations and that cutting down on government expenditures might affect the wrong demographic?  Then consider this.

The cost of administering the tax code combined with the wasted resources that could go into jobs, productivity, buildings, equipment etc. takes hundreds of billions of dollars out of our economy each year.  Eliminating the IRS and the complexity of tax code compliance would free up huge amounts of capital, cut government costs and stabilize the revenue stream.

Now might not seem like the time to do something like this, but only to those who are being fooled by Obama's left hand, not paying any attention to what he is doing with his right hand.

Who will have the balls in Congress to seize this moment and do something truly historic?

Shutdown Was Planned A Long Time Ago

I received an email yesterday that made a pretty good point.  I have no idea if the author was ever really a government employee, but that doesn't matter.  The email says makes a solid case that the government shutdown had to have been planned months in advance.  Here's what it said:

"I have worked in thegovernment on and off for 40 years. During that time I became quite familiar with requisitions, bidding, awarding contracts etc. It is a time consuming process with bean-counters and pencil-necked bureaucrats every step of the way. The simplest request takes months not days or hours. In less than 8 hours of the shutdown, miraculously, professionally printed 3X4 foot signs appeared all over the country in the tens of thousands saying-“this [park, facility,etc. with custom logos] closed due to government shutdown. There has not been a government shutdown in 17 years. These signs were designed, specifications were determined, signs were then requisitioned, bids were posted and vetted, government contracts were awarded. The materials were then ordered and the signs manufactured then distributed by U. S. Mails or freight companies. This shutdown was orchestrated and planned well in advance at least 6-8 month ago. Millions of tax dollars were appropriated and spent in this process. There is a paper trail a mile long leading directly to the White House. "

Remember folks, I've been telling you this for years and years now, if anything happens in politics you can pretty well bet that somebody planned it that way.

Something bigger than a shutdown is afoot.  Be very alert.

Third Party Needed Says Majority Of Americans

According to a new Gallup poll, a record high number of Americans say a third party is needed.

Amid the government shutdown, 60% of Americans say the Democratic and Republicans parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed. That is the highest Gallup has measured in the 10-year history of this question. A new low of 26% believe the two major parties adequately represent Americans.

Okay, here we go again.  The disgruntled and pushed aside in the political arena will rush to quote George Washington's admonition against political parties in his farewell address.  They will claim that the two party system is broken and that we need an independent third party.  Well, let's examine that model.

In the current system the majority party wins the right to control the agenda under discussion.  In the House for example, this means that the party holding the majority of the votes appoints the chairmen of the various committees and sub-committees and gets a majority of the votes on those committees.

Like it or not, what gets put on the agenda of any committee is within the discretion of the chair.  So you have a bill that you think is great, if the chairman doesn't want you to win, for whatever reason, your bill never gets "out of committee".  All bills that have not been voted upon at the end of each two year session of Congress, are dead.

Now insert a third party.  Assume that of the 435 Congressmen 135 come from the new party and two hundred each from the democrats and republicans.  Which party has the majority?  Who appoints the committees?  Who controls the agenda?  You think the House is dysfunctional now, divide it up even more.

Oh sure, I share the frustration of the people who think the system is broken, but have they given any thought to how to fix it other than taking their ball and going home to a protest party?

And where would the new party come from?  Obviously the biggest split we see right now is among republicans.  So we would divide the unified front of the GOP and give control to the democrats who would, as they did when they controlled all three houses (2 in Congress and the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) pass any bill they were told to pass "just to see what was in it?"  You do remember don't you that this is how Obamacare got passed, by a democrat controlled government.

And you do remember, don't you, that opposition to Obamacare by a majority of Americans is what gave the GOP control of the House and is what elected Rand Paul as a republican in 2010?

Sure Congress is a mess, but ask yourself why.  It's because Harry Reid controls the Senate and Barack Obama wants conflict in order to remove the GOP as the last impediment to his plans to control America's future.

And why should we want Barack Obama and Harry Reid to control America's future?  Look what they've done with the time they've had thus far.

Unemployment is worsening, prosperity is more elusive for most Americans, racial tensions are at a fever pitch, the debt is through the roof and people are more fearful of their government than ever before.  With this record you want to do something that would strengthen these folks?

The third party idea needs far more in depth analysis than just the knee jerk reaction to Obama's failures that are so bad the blame is getting stuck on everybody.

What we need is not political revolution, what we need is the revival of reason.  When that day comes good people with a servant's heart and a clear picture of what place our nation holds in the history of the world will have a chance to right our ship of state, and not before.