Saturday, December 17, 2011
Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., December 17 & 18, 2011
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a newsbites theme song along the lines of "Die, RINO Republicans, Die," but this should do...
(Enter the Comments Section of this post... check out the first comment... and you'll understand my lack of Christmas cheer.)
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-12-16/payroll-tax-cut-keystone/52010182/1?loc=interstitialskip
A dispute over a Canada to Texas oil pipeline threatened to complicate efforts in Congress to pass legislation that would avert a New Year's tax increase for millions of Americans and extend government benefits to the unemployed.
* FIRST OF ALL, IT WOULDN'T BE A TAX "INCREASE" IN THE SENSE OF A NEW TAX; IT WOULD SIMPLY BE THE END OF THE PHONY "TAX HOLIDAY" THAT THE PHONY POLITICIANS - IN "BIPARTISAN" FASHION OF COURSE - "GAVE" US LAST YEAR. (BUT OF COURSE SINCE THE MONEY WAS BORROWED IN OUR NAME, THE SCUMBAGS IN WASHINGTON SIMPLY "GAVE" US A "GIFT" THAT WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO PAY FOR DOWN THE ROAD... PLUS INTEREST!
* SECOND OF ALL, RAISE YOU HAND IF YOU VOTED REPUBLICAN IN 2010 SO THAT YOUR "CONSERVATIVE" REPRESENTATIVE AND/OR SENATOR COULD VOTE TO EXTEND GOVERNMENT BENEFITS WHICH HAVE ALREADY BEEN EXTENDED MULTIPLE TIMES?!
* DIE, YOU DIRTY, FILTHY, TRAITOROUS BASTARDS! DIE!
Separately, the House of Representatives, in a rare bipartisan vote, passed a $1 trillion spending bill...
* THAT NONE OF THEM HAD READ. NOT ONE! AGAIN... GIVE ME A SOLUTION OTHER THAN VIOLENCE? I'M PLEADING WITH YOU!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075030/Gaddafi-death-war-crime-says-chief-prosecutor-The-Hague.html
The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has said there are "serious suspicions" that the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was a war crime.
* WHAT...?! YOU MEAN TORTURING AND THEN SHOOTING A PRISONER MAY BE A WAR CRIME...?!?! WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK IT?!
(*SMIRK*)
* TWO-PARTER... MUST READ BOTH PARTS... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203699404577046312408153358.html
Newt Gingrich's opponents aren't letting up in their criticism of his lucrative ties to the failed mortgage giant Freddie Mac...
* NOR WOULD I EXPECT THEM TO - OR WANT THEM TO! FULL DISCLOSURE, BABY... THAT'S MY MOTTO.
In his first response after news broke that he'd made $300,000 working for Freddie, Mr. Gingrich claimed he had "offered them advice on precisely what they didn't do." ... A week later Bloomberg reported that Mr. Gingrich had made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in two separate contracts with Freddie between 1999 and 2008. The former Speaker stuck to his line that "I was approached to offer strategic advice" and had warned the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to stop lending to bad credit risks.
* HOW MUCH OF THE $300,000... AND/OR THE $1.6 TO $1.8 MILLION... DID GINGRICH POCKET AS AN INDIVIDUAL AS OPPOSED TO WHAT "HIS COMPANY" MADE? (FAIR QUESTION, NO?) FUNNY HOW THEY LEAVE THAT QUESTION HANGING, HUH? (*SHRUG*)
Then on December 2 our colleagues at the Journal reported that as late as April 2007 Mr. Gingrich had defended Fannie and Freddie as examples of conservative governance. "While we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself," Mr. Gingrich said in an interview at the time.
* YA KNOW, FOLKS, I RECALL BARNEY FRANK DEFENDING FANNIE AND FREDDIE. I JUST DON'T CALL NEWT GINGRICH DEFENDING FANNIE AND FREDDIE - NOT IN THE SENSE THE JOURNAL WANTS US TO READ THE WORD "DEFEND."
* FOLKS... MY FRIENDS... MY "FANS"... THOSE WHO AGREE WITH ME MOST OF THE TIME, AND EVEN THOSE WHO DISAGREE WITH ME AS OFTEN AS NOT, LET ME ASK YOU... COULD YOU IMAGINE HOW SOMEONE OUT TO GET ME COULD PICK AND CHOOSE THROUGH SEVERAL YEARS OF MY BLOG POSTINGS AND BY PICKING AND CHOOSING MAKE ME LOOK LIKE A RACIST... OR EVEN GO THE OPPOSITE WAY AND MAKE ME LOOK LIKE A LIBERAL OR EVEN A "SOCIALIST" OR A SUPPORTER OF A "RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA" IS THEY WANTED TO AND THEY CONTROLLED THE MESSAGE?
* JUST SAYIN', FOLKS... JUST SAYIN'...
* To be continued. (PLEASE READ ON!)
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Mr. Gingrich added in that interview that there are times "when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development." He cited electricity and telephone network expansion. "It's not a point of view libertarians would embrace, but I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism," he said, adding "I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today."
* NOTICE FOLKS... ALREADY WE'RE OFF THE SPECIFIC "NEWT WAS A FANNIE-FREDDIE SUPPORTER" BANDWAGON. (*SMIRK*) NOW IT'S ON TO THE NEXT BIT OF... er... EVIDENCE THAT NEWT IS ACTUALLY A LEFTWINGER AT HEART! (*SNORT*)
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Mr. Gingrich also knows that many Republicans were fighting against furious opposition, and at great political risk, to reform Fan and Fred in the early and mid-2000s. The heroes included then Congressman Richard Baker, Senator Richard Shelby and Bush White House aide Kevin Warsh. We were at the barricades too, and Mr. Gingrich was never seen in the rear of the reform camp, much less on the front lines.
* DID THEY JUST CITE A "BUSH AIDE" AS BEING "A HERO?"
* HEY... FOLKS... HAVE ANY OF YOU EVEN EVER HEARD OF CONGRESSMAN RICHARD BAKER...?
* SHELBY? YEP! HEARD OF HIM! HE HAS SOMEWHAT OF A MIXED RECORD HIMSELF WHEN IT COMES TO RINOism VS. THE POLICIES I FAVOR.
* HEY... ALL THIS SAID... YEP... NEWT WASN'T ON THE BARRICADES. NEITHER WAS ROMNEY. NEITHER WERE THE VAST, VAST MAJORITY OF ELECTED REPUBLICAN OFFICIALS OR PROMINENT ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICAN MOVERS AND SHAKERS. THIS IS ALL "SHAME ON THEM," I AGREE, BUT TO SINGLE NEWT GINGRICH OUT... (*SHRUG*) IT'S BULLSHIT.
Far from a private-public partnership, they [Fannie & Freddie] were private companies with a federal guarantee against failure.
* NOPE! THAT'S AN OUTRIGHT LIE AND THE AUTHOR OF THIS SMEAR KNOWS IT AND SHOULD BE FIRED FOR IT. THERE WAS NO EXPLICIT LEGAL GUARANTEE.
* LISTEN... FOLKS... THIS BALDFACED LIE SHAMELESSLY INSERTED WITHIN THIS PIECE TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DEALING WITH HERE.
* THERE TRULY IS A REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY (RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN!) TO DESTROY NEWT GINGRICH SO AS TO ALLOW MITT ROMNEY A STRAIGHT PATH TO THE GOP NOMINATION. IT'S AS SIMPLE AS THAT.
http://www.taxpayer.net/search_by_category.php?action=view&proj_id=5030&category=Wastebasket&type=Project
[W]hen it comes to defense spending, members of Congress are using the year-end passage of our spending bills to play budgetary whack-a-mole.
[T]his week we had hijinks surrounding the Fiscal Year 2012 defense policy and spending bills - the latter mixed into a mega-spending bill with eight other spending bills.
The original total for the National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department’s policy bill, shrank after DOD pledged to shed some $350 billion over the next decade...
* "OVER THE NEXT DECADE." WHAT A FUCKING JOKE! WHAT A FUCKING SICK, SICK, SAD, PATHETIC JOKE...
...as part of the August debt-ceiling deal.
The bill that went to the president’s desk last night contained $670 billion for both base and wartime spending, $20 billion less than the bill passed by the House in May.
* AND HOW DOES THIS $670 BILLION COMPARE TO LAST YEAR'S NUMBER...? (I HAVE NO FRIGG'N CLUE BECAUSE OF COURSE THAT NUMBER IS NOT INCLUDED IN THIS ARTICLE.) (*SMIRK*)
But a funny thing happened on the way to this reduced number. More than $6 billion worth of programs migrated from the “base” budget, or funding for DOD’s base operations, into the “overseas contingency operations” budget. This account is exempted from budget caps set in the August budget accords...
(*SMIRK*)
A whopping $4.7 billion jumped from the base operations and maintenance account to the contingency one for programs such as training centers, depot maintenance, public affairs services - even child care and counseling.
(*SNICKER*)
The biggest bundles moved from base budget line items for “undistributed” funds to ones in the contingency budget for “readiness,” a catch-all phrase for keeping the military on trigger-ready alert. Another $1.7 billion jumped over from the procurement account, which funds hardware such as planes and tanks.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The architects of this shift are clearly in the Senate, which also moved $9 billion into the contingency budget in its version of the bill, released in September. Though they cut back on their numbers a bit, the underlying dodge is the same. The final FY12 defense spending bill winding its way to final passage this weekend includes a similar scheme, with DOD dollars worming their way into the State Department’s account within the contingency budget.
* FOLKS... THIS IS NOT DEMOCRACY. THIS IS NOT TRANSPARENCY. FOLKS... THIS ISN'T EVEN SANITY!
* THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IS BROKEN, MY FRIENDS. THERE ARE NO CONSTRAINTS TO THE POWER OF THE POLITICIANS. SMOKE AND MIRRORS ARE THEIR TOOLS OF THE TRADE. AND WE... AND OUR CHILDREN... AND OUR GRANDCHILDREN... WILL BARE THE FINANCIAL BURDEN.
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/14/morning-bell-the-truth-about-the-balanced-budget-amendment/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
In case you’re not keeping track, it has been nearly 1,000 days since the United States Senate passed a budget.
Meanwhile, America’s fiscal nightmare keeps growing, and those on the Left - including Members of the Senate - keep advocating for even more spending despite America’s $15 trillion national debt.
* FUNNY... AS FAR AS I CAN TELL BY ACTUALLY LOOKING AT THE VOTE TALLIES, MANY - INDEED, MOST - OF THOSE CONGRESSIONAL SCUM WHO CLAIM TO BE REPUBLICAN CONSERVATIVES CONSISTENTLY VOTE FOR FEDERAL SPENDING INCREASES YEAR OVER YEAR.
(*SHRUG*)
* PERHAPS INSTEAD OF ME READING HERITAGE BRIEFING, THE FOLKS WHO WRITE THE HERITAGE BRIEFINGS SHOULD READ "USUALLY RIGHT."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577072790106769870.html
'Why would anyone want to live in Illinois?" So muses Curt Wooters, who works for the state and helps his dad run the family's sporting-goods store in Findlay, 200 miles south of Chicago.
Imagine California without the sunshine, New York without the cultural elan, New Jersey without Chris Christie.
That's Illinois.
(*SNORT*) (*AMUSED CHUCKLE*)
Mr. Wooters has another five years before he can retire, but he's advising his kids to leave the state after college. He's also talked with his dad about closing their shop because it costs too much to run a business in Illinois these days. (Plus, "the customers are leaving town.")
Chicago pols control almost all seats of power in Illinois. Gov. Pat Quinn, House Speaker Mike Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Secretary of State Jesse White are all Democrats from Chicago. So was former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who this month was sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption, including trying to sell President Obama's vacated seat in the U.S. Senate.
* WHAT A STATE!
Consequently...
(*READ ON!)
In 2008, lawmakers in Springfield cobbled together a $530 million "rescue" package for Chicago's transit system, which was on the brink of collapse because of sky-high labor and legacy costs.
* PAID FOR BY ALL THE CITIZENS OF ILLINOIS WHO NEVER USE CHICAGO'S TRANSIT SYSTEM!
Just this week they pushed through $300 million of tax credits for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange and Sears to prevent the businesses from fleeing to lower-tax climes.
* WHICH HELPS THE VAST MAJORITY OF ILLINOIS TAXPAYERS HOW...??? (RHETORICAL QUESTION.)
Both Indiana and Ohio have been aggressively poaching Illinois businesses, especially since January, when lawmakers raised the state income tax to a flat 5% from 3% and the corporate tax to 9.5% from 7.3%. The special carve-outs may stop Sears and the financial exchanges from flying the coop, but the income-tax hikes will still prove job-killers. While the jobless rate in other Midwest states has stayed relatively flat over the past year, Illinois's unemployment rate has risen to 10.1% from 9%.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
* FOLKS... LOOK WHAT THE DEMOCRATS DO TO ALMOST EVERY CITY AND STATE THEY RUN? WHILE AS YOU ALL KNOW I HATE MOST REPUBLICANS, THEY'RE THE (RELATIVE) GOOD GUYS COMPARED TO THE LIKES OF THE OBAMA AND PELOSI DEMOCRATS!
Mr. Wooters knows several people who are leaving the state. His neighbors are moving to Kentucky, his best friend to Tennessee. Another friend, who owns a chain of agricultural-supply stores, has moved to Florida and is expanding operations in other states.
The state's bond debt has soared to $30 billion from $9.2 billion in 2002, when Democrats seized control of both the governorship and statehouse.
Lawmakers have borrowed $10 billion just to fund the state's pension system, which is running a $210 billion unfunded liability. (In fact, all of the $7 billion raised by this year's income and corporate tax hikes is going toward funding pensions.)
Republicans, who occupy about 40% of legislative seats, aren't exactly holding the Democrats' feet to the fire. As Speaker Madigan's spokesman Steve Brown told [the author of this op-ed], "95% of things that get done in Illinois are a result of compromise."
* AIN'T BIPARTISANISM GRAND...
"Republicans who held power in the 1980s and '90s were not ideological. They supported tax increases," says John Tillman of the Illinois Policy Institute. More recently, most Republicans supported the Democrats' crony-capitalist tax credits for Chicago businesses, rather than insisting that the legislature roll back the corporate and income tax hikes.
* AS I NOTED UP ABOVE... I HATE MOST ELECTED REPUBLICAN OFFICIALS!
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