Democrats

When left and right argue politics they stubbornly ignore the great big fat wallowing trumpeting rampaging foot-stomping ugly elephant in the living room.

The name of the elephant is Government Coercion.

Neither right nor left want to openly admit that in order to impose their agenda on the population of a country the size of the United States there is no way to do so other than to use government coercion.

You can't participate in the American political culture wars if you don't understand the Shame & Blame Game. So shuffle your favorite deck of victim cards. And don't worry if you're short of the full 52-card compliment plus a pair of jokers. Nobody plays this game with a full deck anyway.

As an introductory lesson, the first hand dealt in this game of political stakes is a common, easily understood one.

At some point, people who called themselves Liberals from the time America was hatched (individualism and self sovereignty were very liberal ideas) came to realize that they couldn't call themselves Liberals any longer because that name had been stolen by American Socialists, Socialism being the exact opposite of what Liberal originally stood for.

So some former Liberals began calling themselves Classical Liberals, sort of like trying to distinguish between Classic Coke and New Coke. This didn't work well since Classical Liberal sounds like Socialists who listen to Brahms. So some former Liberals began calling themselves Conservatives.

A look at the power base of American politics and economics and their long range plans and goals.

Socialism has been proven a failure. It has been soundly refuted in theory by Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. It has been proven a failure in practice all around the world, in Russia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and it is even being abandoned by China. Why would we want to try it here in the United States? This is sheer insanity.

He committed to limit campaign spending by public matching funds for the presidential election, which would have limited the amount he could spend, and that he then reneged on his promise in June. He promised to stop smoking cigarettes. With Barack Obama readying himself to take on what will be quite a high-stakes and stressful job, are we sure we actually want him to quit smoking? “The nation is too precariously balanced right now to risk having him burst into tears, or march off in a snit, or take to his bed with the glums,” suggested an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times over the News Years weekend.

With George leaving office, please remember to refrain from affectionately calling the USA "Bush Country". After the inauguration and swearing in, you may start using "Obama Nation". Thanks for your attention in this matter. Will the Change that Obama proposed resemble what the founding fathers envisioned or will it be an abomination?

AUSTIN – Brushing aside the Republican Party of Texas's arguments, Travis County District Judge Margaret Cooper ruled today that Bill Dingus is eligible to run for State Representative against Speaker Tom Craddick.

Carbon emissions, we're told, cause global warming. Cars cough up carbon. Solution: biofuel. Brilliant! Politicians shovel billions of subsidy taxbucks at farmers who get rich selling corn to bio-refiners. Brazilians burn down that 1990s eco-chic cause, the Amazon rain forest, and plant soybeans. Indonesians hack down so much wilderness for palm oil trees for biodiesel they've climbed into third place on the Worldwide Carbon Emitter's Hit Parade. Turns out leafy growing things store carbon. When they're hacked and burned they cough up their carbon into the atmosphere. All this leaves less food for food .... And then there's this: "We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming." - US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Time to Give Congress the Pink Slip?

Eighteen percent. That is the total number of Americans who currently approve of the job Congress is doing, according to an August 2007 Gallup Poll. It’s a significant drop, to say the least, from the 84 percent approval rating Congress received one month after the September 11 tragedy. Americans today are clearly fed up with their elected leaders, yet are doing little to take action and effect change. In fact, in the 2006 mid-term election, nearly 60 percent of Americans didn’t exercise their right to vote.

Almost thirty years ago, as mayor of the City of Cleveland, I  
confronted the money, the power, and the arrogance of private  
corporate interests seeking to rob our citizens of one of their most  
valuable public assets: a municipal electric system that provided low-
cost power to much of the city, Muny Light. As I observe the  
political machinations regarding the Trans-Texas Corridor and related  
attempts to turn publicly financed highways into privately controlled  
profit centers for giant corporations, I find the similarities chilling.

These last few weeks the House has been in a rush to pass spending bills before August recess. In fact, visitors walking the hallways of Congress become immediately struck by the apparent spending battle between the “conservative Democrats” of the so-called “Blue Dog Coalition,” and the Republican Study Committee, or RSC, generally representing the more conservative bloc of Republican House members. Members of each of these groups place large posters on easels outside their offices. The purpose behind this seems clear, to point the finger at the opposite party for the current budget mess that continues to threaten America’s future.

When Republicans had control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress, very little was done to stem the tide of federal spending. In fact, spending increased every year over the past decade. New programs such as “No Child Left Behind,” and entitlements like the Prescription Drug Benefit, were added at great cost to federal taxpayers.

On January 3rd, our nation's 110th Congress opened its first session, following an election in which America's voters gave control of both bodies composing that institution to the Democratic Party for the first time in 12 years. Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that the "first 100 hours" of Congressional work time will be spent righting wrongs and pointing American government in a new direction. Change is in the air -- but what kind of change?

All sarcasm aside, what kind of sick parent would you have to be to use your own child to gain political favor by entering the kid into the Congressional Page program? It's not like it's such a well kept secret that you could claim "ignorance" while some abusive twit is raping your kid.

What if we all registered as Independents and simply stopped financially supporting either of our two parties? The Lieberman loss has shown me that Americans are generally pissed at the government and I can only hope that all of Congress will be dismissed in the same way. Vote NO on the Congress and Senate in November.