Mitch McConnell

The Choice Is Clear: The McConnell Plan OR Barack Obama Takes Independent Action And Risks Impeachment!

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The Debt Ceiling Crisis is down to less than a week, and Standard and Poors and Moody’s are warning of dire consequences for the American economy, with the lowering of the rating of America as credit worthy, if something is not done quickly.

It is clear that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, cannot control the Tea Party radicals in his midst, and is in real danger of losing his Speakership in the future, whether or not his party retains control of the House of Representatives.

These reckless anarchists should be soundly defeated in the next election in 2012 to restore sanity to Washington, DC, but in the interim, something must be done to overcome the crisis.

The choice is clear! Follow the earlier suggestion of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to adopt a bill giving the President three opportunities to raise the debt level, separate from budget cuts–now, and twice next year–to go beyond Inauguration Day 2013, but with Congress able to vote on the extensions.

Most, if not all Republicans would vote no, while most Democrats would vote yes on each extension, but the President would veto each time, and as long as one third plus one of each house of Congress voted to sustain the President, the debt ceiling would be raised successfully, and end this crisis.

It would put the burden on the Democratic Party and President Obama, who theoretically would be blamed for the extensions, and it might hurt some Democrats running for re-election, but as long as 34 Democrats in the Senate and 145 in the House backed the President, it might allow those Democrats who felt endangered to vote with the Republicans against the extensions.

The thought, however, that voting for the extensions would automatically hurt the Democrats is likely to turn out incorrect, as the image of the Republicans as a reckless, extremist party that is ready to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and refuse to tax the rich, and support corporations unwilling to create jobs as they sit on $2 trillion of money, with a lot of it due to the federal government bailout in 2008-2009 and initiated by George W. Bush and his party–this is very likely to boomerang on the GOP and push them out of the majority in the House of Representatives, and help Barack Obama be re-elected President of the United States!

This McConnell plan, while far from ideal, would be better than Obama simply using the 14th Amendment, Section 4, to extend the debt, as it would cause more controversy and could lead to the impeachment process being used against him.

With a certainty, Obama would survive, and the GOP would be harmed, but if we could, somehow, avoid the turmoil of another impeachment mess, it would certainly be preferable!

So Mitch McConnell and his plan could be the savior of the moment and resolve this horrible crisis, created by the radical Tea Party anarchists,who need to be roundly defeated and removed from their position of holding America hostage!

Absolutely Reckless And Irresponsible Republican Leadership In Congress: Reason For Economic Crisis About To Get Worse!

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As we near the last week before the Debt Ceiling Crisis leads to a potential total collapse of the American economy and puts Americans into a second Great Depression, it is important to understand that this crisis has been caused to a great extent by refusal of Republican leaders in Congress to be responsible for disciplining their party membership to do something that was automatic over the past century, but has become a political football because of the decision of the party to refuse to cooperate on anything with the President they see as illegitimate!

Instead of seeing the good fortunes of the American people as the most urgent responsibility they have as leaders, they have chosen to refuse to even cooperate with each other, as egos and ambitions have become more important than doing what is right–to prevent default on the national debt and work to resolve the budget issues and create the proper environment for job creation!

John Boehner has performed horribly as Speaker of the House, and his name in history will be besmirched as a result! He has been unwilling to cooperate with President Obama, and has failed to assert his leadership over his “Troops” in the manner needed in the present crisis!

But Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, is an even bigger villain, egotistical and totally ambitious to accomplish his own ends, and refusing behind the scenes to cooperate with Boehner, and instead tying his future to an extremist, anarchist, militant movement of reckless “flame throwers” (The Tea Party Movement), who refuse to understand that successful politics MUST be based on the art of compromise!

At the same time, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, overly ambitious to become Senate Majority Leader, openly has made the defeat of President Obama his major goal, and therefore has lost all credibility to claim a desire to resolve the issue of the debt ceiling in any form. Instead, he would prefer to let the President and his party take all responsibility and blame for the raising of the debt ceiling!

These three men, along with Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, have shown disrespect, and lack of cooperation with the President in a way that no one can ever quite remember occurring to this extreme state, with any other President, no matter what the personal differences or ideological disputes that might have existed!

So the Republican Party will pay heavily for this lack of leadership by their party spokesmen, and the country is going to suffer further from the economic collapse caused by the outrageous policies of the Republican Congresses that led to the Great Recession, and now in danger of becoming a second Great Depression!

The Debt Ceiling Issue: A “Waterloo” For Both Republicans And Democrats In Office?

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The Debt Ceiling Crisis is rapidly becoming a potential “Waterloo” for both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

For the Republicans, their split on strategy, and the possibility that the Mitch McConnell plan to drop the issue of spending for now and give the President veto power three times in the next 18 months to avoid default , but allow the raising of the national debt, has bitterly divided the party, with the Tea Party people up in arms against the Establishment Republicans represented by McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner.

On the other hand, if the McConnell plan ends up as the temporary solution to the crisis, it will force Democrats to vote THREE times on raising the national debt, and that will be used by Republicans against Democrats in the congressional campaigns of 2012, and is seen as likely to cause the defeat of many Democrats, something that Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, a traditional moderate swing state, was screaming about to high heaven to reporters!

The whole issue could neutralize the political combat, but what would seem likely is that INCUMBENTS of both parties could suffer in the upcoming election, while Barack Obama could benefit in a major way!

So it could seem to many that the President might be in good shape, but with his party possibly lying in tatters, alongside fellow Republican officeholders.

We could end up with a more rebellious Congress of critics of the handling of the whole issue, and make compromise between President Obama or even a President Romney having a literal nightmare dealing with the legislative branch! And we could end up with only a few votes margin in both Houses, making progress on ANYTHING extremely difficult!

The Knives Are Out For John Boehner And Mitch McConnell: Extreme Right Wing Coup Likely In Republican Party In Congress!

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Republican leaders John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, are in deep trouble within their own party, having angered Tea Party radicals and right wingers in their own chambers, and it is clear that the knives are out to take away their leadership, if not immediately, which would be difficult to achieve, but certainly in 2013 when the new Congress convenes!

Eric Cantor, House Majority Whip, is very obviously angling to seize the leadership from Boehner, and is likely to be backed by the “Young Guns”, such as Kevin McCarthy of California, the Majority Whip, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin! Also, don’t be surprised if there will be a challenge to Boehner in his Ohio district in the Cincinnati area by a Tea Party radical in the primaries next year!

McConnell has a safe seat to his next election in 2014, but is likely to face opposition then in the primaries by Tea Party radicals, and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and his own fellow Kentuckian, Rand Paul, who he has very little in common with, are certainly no friends of his, much like Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, who also flirt with Tea Party types and are young and very ambitious! One of these individuals will try to take away the Senate leadership from him in 2013!

It is a sad scene that the GOP leaders cannot control their own membership, but it demonstrates how extremist the Republican Party has become, and the danger it represents to the American future, even more so with the possible Presidential candidacy of Michele Bachmann, herself one of the original Tea Party favorites and organizers!

This nation needs help to avoid the disaster that the Tea Party represents, not only to the GOP, but to the country at large!

The Coming Implosion Of The Republican Party: Congress And The Presidential Race!

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Just as Barack Obama shows evidence of great fund raising, an all time high, and the Republicans show weakness in fund raising, the Republican Party is facing an implosion on both the Congressional and Presidential campaign level!

The Debt Ceiling Crisis has shown chinks in the armor of the Congressional Republicans, as the leadership of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell has split the Republicans on Capitol Hill, into the predictable split between Establishment Republicans and the Tea Party Movement freshmen in the House and a few in the US Senate!

Boehner has been pressured by his deputy, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who is obviously trying to overrule Boehner and push him out, as everyone in the know is aware of Cantor’s personal ambitions to be Speaker of the House!

McConnell, convinced that no deal on the debt ceiling extension can be reached, has come up with a plan he thinks will help the Republicans win control of Congress and the White House in 2012, declaring he cannot work with Obama. His plan is to allow three votes of disapproval on extensions of the debt limit–one now, one in the Fall and one in the Summer of 2012, assuring an extension of the debt but with only Democrats voting for it, giving Republicans a campaign issue to be used in the upcoming election, and avoiding the financial uncertainties of NOT raising the debt ceiling.

Tea Party freshmen are furious at McConnell, and Boehner who has backed him, so a rebellion within the party is in evidence, with Eric Cantor leading it in the House and Jim DeMint and Rand Paul in the Senate!

The thought that the Republicans will somehow be able to use this debt issue as a way to win control of the executive and legislative branches in 2012 is a real long shot, as it is not as if the Republicans did not raise the debt ceiling SEVEN times under George W. Bush! It is much more likely to reverberate against them, and with a split party in Congress, actually cause them to lose seats in both chambers and likely lose control of the House of Representatives, where a switch of 25 seats gives Democrats control, not all that hard to attain!

And with Michele Bachmann surging as the real threat to Establishment Republicans and Mitt Romney, we could see Bachmann become the nominee, and end up as the Barry Goldwater of 2012, as to imagine her winning the White House and helping her party to win control of both houses of Congress requires hallucination on a major scale!

To top it off, IF Sarah Palin or Rick Perry, or both, end up running for the Presidency, still hard to imagine or conceive, it will only complicate the situation even further, and undermine GOP hopes for control, so it is now more likely that they will go back to minority status, through their own ineptness and incompetence, and failure to recognize the needs of the American people in the midst of the aftermath of the Great Recession!

The “Do Nothing” 112th Congress: Worst In Generations!

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The 112th Congress, the first at least since 1900 to have a Republican House and Democratic Senate rather than the opposite when there is a divided Congress, has managed in six months to create a disgraceful record of NOT dealing with the economic crisis facing the nation!

With Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and others in the Republican Party focused on making the economy worse as a reason to have the voters turn out President Obama for a second Presidential term, we have seen no action on creating jobs, passing bills, approving Presidential appointments to various judicial and executive posts, or doing anything constructive in any form!

This irresponsible Congress comes right after one of the most constructive Congresses in American history, the 111th Congress under Speaker Nancy Pelosi!

This could be the most negative, unaccomplished Congress since Harry Truman ran against what he called the “do nothing” 80th Congress of 1947-1948, leading to his surprise victory and the Democrats regaining the majority in both houses in the 1948 election!

Instead of offering a real alternative for 14 million plus unemployed people, all the Republicans can do is promote economic instability and threaten the safety net of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which one would think were well established and would not come under sustained attack!

It all comes down to the old reality that Democrats care about people, and Republicans care about property and possessions–or material things in another descriptive manner–rather than the welfare of the masses of citizens!

A Sign Of 2012 Reversal Of 2010 Midterm Elections: NY 26 Congressional District Results Show Medicare Is Democratic Weapon Against Republicans!

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In what could be described as an upset, the Democratic nominee for the New York 26th Congressional District seat in the Buffalo area, vacated by Republican Chris Lee (involved in an embarrassing shirtless pic scandal), won in a district which had voted Republican on a regular basis since the Civil War!

The winning Democrat won about 48 percent of the vote, nearly twice the amount of the Democratic nominee against Chris Lee in the 2010 election six and a half months ago, and it was based on the issue of Medicare, where the GOP nominee said she would have supported the Paul Ryan plan to privatize Medicare over a ten year period!

Town Halls and polls have steadily indicated that Americans of ALL ages, not just senior citizens, do NOT want the privatization of Medicare, and there are also strong hints that the whole issue of Health Care reform may be moving in the direction of the Democrats, after they lost more seats (63) in a midterm election than since 1938, and more seats than ever before since 1948.

Health Care is a basic human right, and the issue has been brought to center stage again by what the 26th Congressional District has just done, and it will create many sleepless days and nights for the House majority led by Speaker John Boehner, the Senate minority led by Mitch McConnell, and all of the GOP Presidential candidates competing to replace Barack Obama in the White House!

The Effects Of A Government Shutdown After March 4

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How quickly people forget what happens if the government, which we all take for granted, was to “shut down”!

Of course, the defense of the United States continues, and air traffic controllers still are on the job, but in so many ways, the country and its citizens suffer if the government runs out of money and cannot come up with a compromise budget bill to support government expenditures.

In 1995, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress forced a government shutdown, which went on for two weeks, and ended up with President Bill Clinton winning the public relations battle, and going on to win a second term, and seeing the Republican party lose seats in the Congress, as a result.

But the memory of Americans is very limited as to what a government shutdown actually entails.

Here are the facts:

Health care–disease monitoring, clinical research, and toxic waste cleanup came to a halt.

Law Enforcement–delays in applications being processed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; delay in delinquent child support cases; cancellation in recruitment and testing of federal law enforcement officials, including border control and immigration officials.

Parks, Museums and Monuments–seven million tourists to 386 National Park Service sites prevented by closures; 2 million visitors to national museums and monuments also prevented by shutdowns; effect on local communities economically due to these closures.

Visas and Passports–20-30 thousand visa applications by foreigners unprocessed every day; 200,00 applications for passports delayed; tourist industries and airlines suffered millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Veterans Services–health, welfare, finance and travel cut back dramatically.

Federal Contractors–lost revenue in the millions of dollars, and many people furloughed without a pay check.

A shutdown would affect the American economy at a delicate moment, while in 1995, the economy was flourishing, and still the shutdown had a deleterious effect, and left a sour taste in many people’s mouths!

How can a government shut down? Only when its leader are so irresponsible as Newt Gingrich and the Republicans were then, and even worse, as John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders are today, at a time when economic growth and stability should be the priority, but is obviously not the case.

To avoid a shutdown will probably require a miracle, and the Republican Party will again acquire the image as the anti government party, which yet wishes to govern!

Hopefully, the American people will turn on the party which is promoting suffering and mean spirit as their answer to the economic collapse caused by their party under President George W. Bush!

The Hypocrisy Of Mitch McConnell And Rand Paul! :(

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul, both from the Commonwealth of Kentucky, represent one of the poorest states in the Union, and yet both are believers in limited government and talk about balancing the budget no matter how much it hurts their own constituents.

But in actual fact, despite their rhetoric, Kentucky is a leading “welfare” state!

According to the conservative Tax Foundation, Kentucky gains back $1.51 for every dollar they send to the US government! Other so called “conservative” states also receive much more back than they contribute.

Imagine this: it is the “blue” states, that are accused of reckless budgets, who actually are cheated by the US government!

For instance, California gets back only 81 cents for every dollar sent to the national government, while Illinois gets 75 cents, New York gets 79 cents, and Connecticut even less with only 69 cents!

So the ‘blue” states are cheated in favor of the “red” states, even though they claim to be against welfare and handouts!

If it was not for the wealthier states contributing to Kentucky and other Southern and Western states that are poorer, those “red” states would be even worse off than they are!

But at the least, could we not expect Senators McConnell and Paul to be more honest and admit that they do truly believe in welfare and handouts, as long as their residents are not paying for it?

Anything less is HYPOCRISY! So what is new? 🙁

Senator Rand Paul Of Kentucky: Center Of Controversy And Nightmare For The Republican Party! :(

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has had to learn to live with fellow Kentucky Senate colleagues that have both embarrassed him and made his life miserable! If only one could read his mind, as his body language regarding past Senator Jim Bunning and his successor Rand Paul reveals discomfort, it would be an interesting analysis of how a party leader must survive both fools and loons! 🙁

Rand Paul may only have been in the Senate now for one month, but he is like a hurricane in his promotion of ideas that almost no one will accept, even in his own party, but yet saluted by the Tea Party movement!

Rand Paul seems to love introducing legislation that will never pass, just to draw attention to his looniness and his weird libertarian ideas which will never go anywhere, except into the minds of those who believe that government is a total evil and that we must isolate ourselves from the outside world! 🙁

Rand Paul, in association with Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is promoting a Life at Conception Act, which he believes would overrule Roe V. Wade, and in the process take a woman’s right over her own body totally away! 🙁

He is also sponsoring legislation to prevent the children of illegal immigrants born in America from being citizens, thereby introducing a new interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which grants birthright citizenship!

Additionally, Rand Paul wants all foreign aid to our ally, Israel, ended, as part of his proposal to cut $500 billion from the present year’s national budget with only eight months left in the fiscal year. He wants the $3 billion aid to Israel ended, along with massive cuts in education, housing and energy programs, the most extreme idea of cuts proposed by any Republican, with the party shooting for only $100 billion cuts this fiscal year, with no cut in aid to Israel and other foreign aid, which he wants cut by $20 billion!

Republican leaders such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ilena Ros-Lehtinen of Florida have condemned a cutoff of aid to Israel, and Jewish groups in both major political parties, and both conservatives and liberals have made clear their opposition to such a cutoff, so Rand Paul’s advocacy has no chance of success, anymore than his other ideas mentioned above!

And get this: this past week, the Senate unanimously, except for Paul, adopted a measure making it a federal crime to aim a laser point at an aircraft, with the Kentucky senator feeling that should be an issue for states to handle individually, even though aviation is interstate, and there has been a growing problem of such incidents, thankfully without a disaster occurring!

It is clear that Rand Paul will be a center of attention over the next six years with his outrageous statements and actions, and imagine this. It is rumored that his father, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, may run for the soon to be open seat in that state after Kay Bailey Hutchison decided not to run for re-election in 2012!

If Ron Paul were to win that seat, he would be the oldest first time freshman at age 77 to take a seat in the US Senate!

Can one imagine having two Senators Paul at the same time? 🙁

The only worse scenario is the nightmare of either Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann as President of the United States in 2013!

If both scenarios were to occur, the nation would be in a living hell of its own making, due to stupidity, ignorance, and lack of common sense of the American people! 🙁