Can We Survive Our Politicians?

I am so angry I cannot even see straight. On August 27th, Senator Diane Watson of California, a Democrat stated, "that Fidel Castro was a bright man and great leader." I saw the direct quote on the Glenn Beck Show, Monday, August 31st. Unbelievable. I am stunned. We have Senators praising FIDEL CASTRO of CUBA. A brutal dictator. Cubans have swam to our shores for decades, the last 4o years, to escape this brutal dictator and a U.S. Senator had the nerve to praise him.

This says it all AMERICANS. Democrats are idolizing communists, socialists,and dictators. THIS SHOULD SCARE YOU!!! No wonder they want more and more of our liberties.

Praising FIDEL CASTRO, stunned, just stunned!

Here it is for your viewing. Let me know how you feel? This goes beyond party lines. Americans should be upset. Period.

Totalitarian Trojan Horse In "Stimulus" Bill

No wonder the Democrats wanted this Socialist Trojan Horse to rush through the House and Senate. We are now learning that Socialized health care has been included in this monstrosity. The amount of control the Obama Administration will have over our lives by the end of the year is truly frightening.

Is A Refinery Strike A Gift To President Obama?

As a refinery operator and a member of a union(for the moment, I am getting out because of this) the possibility of a refinery strike is not good for anyone. My main concern is that it could used by President Obama to justify even further control over our lives. More of my thought are posted here.

The American Way

I'd like to start today's post by saying that I am proud to be an American. I truly am! What a great country we live in that we have so many freedoms. We can practice any religion we choose. We have the freedom to live where we want, do what we want, and make choices.

I have the freedom to have this blog in which I can write and express myself in anyway I see fit. If I don't like something my government has done, I have the right to express that! You know in some countries that's a death sentence?

Today was another great day in the United States. I'm sure some of you may be shocked to hear my say that. But see today we saw the democratic process that makes this country great put into action. We swore into office our 44th President. And, although I didn't vote for him, I am proud that we all had a chance to vote for who we believed in.

We have a new Commander in Chief who I will stand behind because he is our leader. I may disagree with some of his ideas; but I believe in this great country and the checks and balance system that we have in place. I also believe that I am not the only citizen of this country and, though I may not always agree, our voting allows for what is good for the majority to prevail.

I am as proud to be an American today as any other day. I do pray that God watches over our country, keeps her safe from harm, and gives us no more than our country (and those who serve her) more than they can handle.

What I'm not proud of is how other's are defining this day. This isn't, as many would have you believe, a day to celebrate a "black man" in office. No, a man who was allowed the same opportunities as you and me; a man who has proven himself worthy in many people's eyes; a man who has served this great country as a representative, was sworn into office.

He is no different that those who didn't win the Presidential election. When people declare that this is a great step for the country and focus on the color of his skin...that is racist.

Do you mean to tell me that had he not been black that he would be any less qualified for this position he is in?

It's not about the color of his skin. Everyone who thinks and expresses this needs to take a deeper look. This has NOTHING to do with race. It has everything to do with the ability of a person.

You are cheapening his Presidency if you make it about anything other than that.

I pray for him, his family, and this country because I am an American. It doesn't matter to me what his ancestry is. What matters to me is the ability for this Commander in Chief to lead this country.

Is he the best person for the job? In my opinion, no. But then again, I don't think anyone who ran in the end was the best person for the job. In the end, he was the person that the majority of the country chose...and that's American enough for me.

Update

For those of you who live in California, now is the time to act. This is an update from my last post. Democrates attempted to put through an illegal vote yesterday by calling all the tax increases fees and claiming they only need a majority vote rather than the 2/3 vote for a tax.

Arnold only vetoed it because there were other apects he didn't like and wouldn't even comment on the legality of the issue. To the untrained ear, it sounded like he would have approved this illegal budget had it had the other cuts he wanted.

This is absolutly scary around here! Since when can a politician basically say that they don't like the way budget negotiations are going so they're going to pass an illegal budget anyway.

Oh, I'm fuming mad and making many calls today. They cannot get away with this. We need to act fast!

They'll only "negotiate" if they can raise taxes

Still no budget here in California and, to make matters worse, the Republicans have proposed a great budget, just like the governator had requested, and neither the Democrats nor the Governor are willing to accept it.

The way I see it, they don’t want to accept it because it would mean not taking more of our money through taxes or “fees”. They will be able to get $6.5 billion dollars just by redirecting funds that are currently not being used:

• 2.1 billion would come from Prop 10 monies which are currently not being used. This money is directed for early childcare centers; I work in a funded center and I can tell you, we don’t need that money. Sure, some of it comes in handy; however there are times when we are buying junk that we don’t need because it’s there. Knowing that there is that much left over…that’s a lot of wasted money!

• 3.9 billion would come from Prop 63 monies which are not being used. This money is directed for mental health issues. Now, I haven’t talked to anyone personally in this field, but from the reports I’ve read and heard, this money would be missed about as much as the Prop 10 money would be missed in the early childhood care centers.
  
• 484 million would come from some fund transfers.
  
  

That’s it. There is no more money coming out of the tax payer’s pockets or hands. The Republicans are seeing exactly what the public is seeing: there already is more than enough money available to them and not enough for us.

So, how does that compare to what the Democrats and Governor want to do? Every one of their plans involves raising taxes in many forms:

• (Democrats) 5.7 billion to increase the vehicle license “fee” (read tax) to 2% of the vehicle’s value. (Schwarzenegger) has a similar idea, but it would just be a flat $12 per vehicle to give a 451 million increase to revenue
  
  
• (Democrats) 2.4 billion to increase the income tax and freezing the tax brackets rather than letting them adjust with inflation. Now, Schwarzenegger doesn’t want to increase the INCOME tax…no he has other plans (read on)
  
  
• (Schwarzenegger) 9.1 billion sales tax increase by 1.5 cents for 3 years (cause of course they’ll drop it back down after 3 years and forget the fact that we have one of the highest sales tax in the country)
  
  
• (Schwarzenegger) 1.4 billion sales tax on services not currently taxed (things like taking your pet to the vet, amusement parks, sporting events, and of course let’s hit those cars up again with a tax on vehicle repairs)
  
  
• (Schwarzenegger) 1.2 billion for a 9.9% tax per barrel on oil extracted from California
  
  
• (Schwarzenegger) and last but not least 829 million by raising excise tax on alcohol to 5 cents a drink
  
  

Of course, according to the Democrats they are willing to “negotiate”; to them this means that they will be willing to make SOME cuts if the Republicans would just agree to increasing taxes.

Let’s see, the Republicans are willing to cut 15.6 billion dollars from the budget, the Governator 9.3 billion, and a whopping 4.5 billion for the Democrats. Who really is serious about get our budget back in order?

Everyone is willing to cut spending on the schools: 10.6 billion from the Republicans, 4.5 billion for Democrats, and 3.2 billion for Schwarzenegger. From what I see, way more than all that combined gets WASTED in the schools every year.

At least Schwarzenegger and the Republicans are close to what should be cut in SSI/SSP. When looking at the Democrats, it seems they aren’t willing to cut more than 750 million for ANY program other than the schools.

The Republicans specifically say they want to cut 738 million from UC and CSU by increasing the student fee and eliminating in-state tuition for UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS! I seriously want to know HOW they can get in-state tuition if they aren’t legal residents here. Someone want to explain that to me anyway?

There is also an agreement from the Republicans and Schwarzenegger in cutting spending on transit grants. I am all for this considering how little the transit is used in this state anyway. Oh, the Democrats are willing to cut, but only 156 million.

My favorite, the Republicans actually have proposed a 5% pay cut to the legislation! They see that if they are cutting from everywhere else, they need to cut themselves as well. I admire that!

A message to the California Republicans: Keep up the amazing work, stay strong, we are all rooting for you!

Who To Trust?

The FBI has recently claimed Illinois has the most corrupt state government in the nation. Fortunately, Yahoo has told us what to think about that:

And while the AP is writing about how Obama used his wits, his intelligence, and his common sense to remain 'above the fray' of Illinois corruption, the liberals are openly criticizing Obama (never thought I would see that happen).

Obama's most recent critics have included Pennslyvania governor Ed Rendell and talk show host Ed Schultz. Both of them think Obama could have been more up front about the whole Blagojevich scandal.

Here's my take. Governor Blagojevich -who tried to sell Obama's Senate seat- cursed Obama on FBI recordings for not offering payment to install Obama's pick for the position. Good for Obama, to not give into corruption and bribery.

What's bad for Obama is that many, many lies have been circulated by his staff -saying at times of convenience that they had been talking with the governor about the selection and other times that they hadn't. Secondly, Obama was reluctant to call for the governor's resignation.

Emanuel Rahm is now on the hot seat. ABC News reports how Rahm (and the entirety of the staff) are avoiding questions about their previous statements.

Ben Smith at the Politico has surmised that Obama has tried to keep a fairly neutral policy toward Illinois corruption. Neutrality (often a foe of earnesty) is what is not in Obama's favor. If he knew about scandalous offers made by Blagojevich, he should have reported the information to the authorities.

In my opinion, to have secretly overlooked the offenses of the governor (which other 'clients' refused to do) and not reported them to the authorities is really to have condoned and enabled them. Obama is not entirely clean on this one.

Here's my breakdown:

Earnesty of Blagojavich: 30%
Tried to look one way while he was acting another way.
At least he leaned toward one side: money.

Earnesty of Obama: 60%
Refused to bribe a wayward official,
but also somewhat neutral in the face of lawlessness.

Earnesty of Yahoo: 20%
Earnesty of the Associated Press: 20%
They pretend to be the news, but they'd rather slip us their opinions.

Earnesty of Ed Rendell: 80%
Earnesty of Ed Schultz: 80%
Not conservative, but earnest to admit their leader's faults.
Hard to know if it had more to do with expedience.

It's been 5 months!

Out here in California, we had the “benefit” of not having a state budget until well into September. Those of us who worked for state-funded programs had to sit by and hope that there would be money to run the program until it was finally passed while those who were creating this budget were still collecting their paychecks. Why shouldn’t they get paid by our tax money when the rest of it is being held up by their lack of competency to finally get a budget passed?

Within a month after the budget was passed, our fine Governor called them all back to redo the budget because we were already not going to be balanced according to the first quarter’s revenues. Now, I do have to commend our Republican representatives for standing their ground and not allowing any tax increase. They said from the beginning that they would not approve a budget if it had even the slightest tax increase (or “fee” increase as they also like to use); and they stuck with it even when it looked like there was going to be no give.

However, we are at it again; they are in budget negotiations once again and, as usual, the Democrats are talking about raising taxes, increasing fees, etc… They have the full support of our “centralist” Governor who keeps coming out and telling everyone that the Republicans just keep saying no to all the budgets and will not “meet in the middle.”

No, they won’t meet in the middle. They have already said that they will not vote for any sort of tax increase. They have already stated that the only thing they will consider is a spending cut. I think they proved that they are willing to stand their ground until the right budget gets passed.

The thing is the rest of our fine representatives don’t want to cut spending. They want to increase spending. They want to increase taxes…oh but only for 3 years. Yeah, because every tax increase has been brought back after it’s time was up. We are still paying taxes on tires from World War I!

Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying "That is not the way to negotiate. You have to say this is what it takes and then I'm ready to increase the revenues." So, he and the Democrats have not learned; there is no “ready to increase the revenues.” That is just another code word for taxes!

I am extremely proud of my Republican representative for sticking his ground. I hope they all stay strong. Goodness knows they are the only ones there who are truly looking out for what the people want.

We want all of you to stop wasting our hard earned money! These Republicans will remain in office for a very long time if they keep it up.

Joe Excited About Sarah

Joe Wurzelbacher (a.k.a. Joe the Plumber) has recently admitted to the Politico that he was appalled by John McCain. Wurzelbacher reported that he asked McCain hard questions and was dismayed by his reponse.

In particular Joe asked McCain how he could support the bailout when so many people were against it. Apparently the plumber was not very impressed by his reponse (I wasn't very impressed by McCain and Bush's support of the bailout).

Joe has mentioned that he is very excited about Sarah Palin. That's just about exactly the way I view the 2008 Republican ticket. When Joe was asked why he didn't speak of his dismay for McCain before the election, Joe said he was quiet about it because Barrack Obama sounded so much worse as a president than McCain. Honestly, I believe that if elections were held today (even without the Illinois Governor scandal) Sarah Palin would handsomely defeat Barrack Obama. For an extended length of the campaign Sarah Palin had higher favorability ratings than any of the other running mates.

CHANGE! CHANGE! CHANGE!

The ever growing list of companies and Retail stores closing means more people out of work. The news is more and more depressing. I am so hoping for change. Not holding my breath.
What I would love to see is some campaign reform. The amount of money spent on campaigning is just wrong. If our politicians are so good at getting donations, well, hell why don't we have them do some fundraising for worthwhile causes. My Goodness, what they raised alone for their campaigns could have saved social security (I don't know if anything can save it, really)
Anyways, I think a change is needed on campaign policies. Limits on spending/fundraising and time. For Goodness sakes, if we cut back, said, hey two months of the bullshit, that would cut the cost.
I am hoping for CHANGE, CHANGE and more CHANGE. AND we all know Obama had a lot of CHANGE! Would he really before campaign reform? I am sure someone out there will try to say his rhetoric says he is but ACTIONS say a lot. Obama had a lot of CHANGE! Not sure he would give it up?