US House Of Representatives

The Politics Of The Libyan Civil War Intervention

Ronald Leave a comment

With the US involvement in the Libyan Civil War, along with that of France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Canada, Denmark, and Norway, and with the backing of the Arab League, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the United Nations, and lack of use of their Security Council veto by Russia and China, we are seeing a political split developing in our nation.

We have learned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, after earlier doubts, was finally convinced by UN Ambassador Susan Rice.

We have also learned that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen had great doubts on the intervention, but of course were loyal team members once the decision was made for involvement.

Also, Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, of different political persuasions and the last two losing Presidential candidates in 2008 and 2004 both felt that intervention was essential.

Independent Senator Joe Lieberman and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also have strongly backed the military action, but Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking member ofr the Kerry led Foreign Relations Committee, has expressed great upset at the intervention, and Speaker of the House John Boehner has made it clear that the President needed to consult Congress before taking action, which he basically failed to do, leading to a controversy over the War Powers Act of 1973, which mandates an explanation by the President within 48 hours, and the ability of Congress in theory to demand withdrawal after the military action, IF they can gain a majority vote in both houses of Congress, which has never happened, and is unlikely ever to happen!

The lack of consultation so far has angered Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich so much that he has brought up the concept of impeachment of the President, which certainly is not going to happen, but shows the turmoil developing because of the US now being committed to THREE wars at once, all in Muslim nations!

The danger is that Obama might, by what he has decided to do, to intervene to stop mass murder in Libya, could end up in a protracted war that could cost the nation many billions of dollars at a time when we are in economic crisis and cutting domestic budgets in states and nationally.

Additionally, it could cause Obama to have a Democratic opponent in the Presidential primaries of 2012, who assuredly he could defeat, but the attacks that would occur against him would weaken him, and make him more subjected to the likelihood of defeat in the Presidential Election of 2012 by the Republican nominee for that office!

This has happened three times in the past 35 years, in 1976 to Gerald Ford, in 1980 to Jimmy Carter, and in 1992 to George H W Bush.

It is clear that the Libyan Civil War intervention complicates the economic and political scene in America, and creates potentially new defense, foreign policy, and national security issues for the short run and the long run!

Republicans And Health Insurance Challenge By Democrats On Capitol Hill!

Ronald Leave a comment

The Republican Party is doing everything it can to destroy implementation of the Obama Health Care plan, making major efforts to defund it.

Meanwhile, in a smart move, the Democrats are proposing that all Republicans in Congress make clear publicly whether or not they are taking government funded health care from taxpayers, while moving to deny it to millions of taxpayers at the same time!

In other words, why should Republicans accept federally funded health care if they wish to deny it to the citizens of the country who do not have it?

This is utter hypocrisy, and the Democrats wish to embarrass the vast majority of Republicans who are taking advantage of the federal health care coverage they are entitled to.

As it is, about a dozen of the 87 freshman Republicans in the House have declined to accept their health care benefits, but that means over 85 percent of the freshmen ARE accepting the benefits while fighting to prevent it for millions of Americans!

The proposal of the Democrats will not pass, but at least it brings attention to the issue of the arrogance of the Republicans on the issue of health care!

Michele Bachmann’s Ignorance Of American History And The Constitution!

Ronald Leave a comment

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a potential Presidential candidate for 2012, has made a total fool of herself recently, displaying her total ignorance of American history and the Constitution.

It makes one wonder what kind of staff she has in her House of Representatives offices, that they did not stop her from making the tremendous blunders she committed, which make her look ridiculous and ignorant, dangerous for a potential Presidential candidate.

We would have thought that Sarah Palin was the only ignorant Republican considering a run for the White House. But Michele Bachmann, at least on paper, is more educated, including a law degree from Oral Roberts University! However, it has not helped to make her an informed person!

But that may be the problem. Having a degree from an evangelical religiously based law school would seem to many to be suspect, that they make up their own history and concepts of what the law and the Constitution is!

Bachmann has claimed that the Founding Fathers ended slavery, even though the Constitution includes two slavery compromises, and the Civil War was waged under Abraham Lincoln on the issue of slavery and its expansion.

She most recently went to New Hampshire, the site of the first primary in March 2012, and congratulated them on being the site of the first shots of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord, failing to recognize that these sites are located in Massachusetts!

It is obvious she had a poor legal education, has a poor historical knowledge base, less than immigrants who have to pass a test to become citizens, and an inferior staff that lacks the knowledge and ability to protect their boss by being able to inform her of the truth and the facts before she speaks anywhere, and proceeds to make a total fool of herself!

It is not just her extreme right wing views that are a problem for Michele Bachmann; it is also her stupidity and ignorance!

John McCain And Affirmative Action In Selection Of VP Candidate In 2008

Ronald Leave a comment

A new revelation has been made by one of Senator John McCain’s campaign managers, indicating that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was added to the Vice Presidential list in 2008 because McCain felt there was a need for a woman on his final list of Vice Presidential possibilities.

But McCain, by doing so, endangered the whole nation with a choice of a running mate, who while a female, was totally unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, let alone be on the list as a potential Presidential candidate in 2012!

Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton; she is also not Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, or former Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, or other qualified women of the GOP in the House of Representatives!

Palin has been a burden on the nation, and the only benefit of her candidacy in 2008 was to enrich her by millions of dollars as she became a celebrity, although with very thin, almost unnoticeable qualifications other than her appearance.

When one looks at the the rest of the list McCain was considering for the Vice Presidency, one can only weep!

On that list were Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Joe Lieberman, Charlie Crist, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City.

ANY and ALL of them would have been far better qualified, and might have given McCain a real shot at winning, even in the midst of the economic collapse of September and October 2008. In any case, we could all have rested easier with the thought of a President Romney, a President Pawlenty, a President Lieberman, a President Crist, or a President Bloomberg than a President Palin!

This shows how the first decision a Presidential nominee makes, who shall be his Vice President and a heartbeat away from the White House, is a crucial test as to his suitability for the White House!

And when he makes the wrong decision, as Richard Nixon did in selecting Spiro Agnew, and George HW Bush did in picking Dan Quayle, it creates nightmares and the need for prayers, as it would have had John McCain won the White House in 2008!

Affirmative Action is fine, as long as the candidate involved is QUALIFIED, which Sarah Palin was not, and is not, to be President of the United States!

The Emergence Of A People’s Party Movement To Fight The Tea Party Movement And The Republican Party!

Ronald Leave a comment

The events in Wisconsin these past three weeks, leading to the end of collective bargaining of public service workers there, plus similar action in Ohio and elsewhere yet to be seen, has awakened the middle class, and those less fortunate, to the reality that they cannot sit back and allow the national Democratic Party to plan alone for 2012, as President Obama seems unwilling at this point to challenge the opposition openly, as part of his centrist strategy for re-election.

So the average American who is disgusted with the power and influence of the super rich and the corporations must organize for the future and pressure the Democratic Party in 2011-2012, as much as the right wing Tea Party did the same with the Republican Party in 2009-2010, and is still at work on its evil intentions!

So there is already the emergence of what many might call the People’s Party, with set goals of what they wish to accomplish between now and the Presidential Election of 2012, and Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, is one of those promoting such a development, and discussing it on the Talking Points Memo website two days ago. Of course, reality is that not all of the below ideas can be accomplished quickly, but they are a series of goals for the future.

What are the goals of the People’s Party?

1. Increase the pay and bargaining power of ordinary workers, by promoting collective bargaining and union rights of all workers.

2. Require the super rich to pay their fair share of taxes–which includes capital gains taxes, inheritance taxes, taking away citizenship of those sheltering income overseas, and increasing top marginal tax rates and number of top tax brackets.

3. Protect and expand government programs that advance the middle class and the poor, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Public Education, Pell Grants for college students, Public Transportation, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

4. End corporate welfare, including wasteful defense spending, agricultural subsidies, and tax subsidies for industries and specific corporations at the state and national level.

5. Save Social Security by raising the income level that is taxed to all income that is earned, just as it is for Medicare.

6. End Wall Street dominance of the economy, requiring smaller banks, having a financial transactions tax, and preventing future bailouts.

7. Enforce regulations that benefit workers, consumers, investors, and the environment, and raise penalties on corporations that violate these regulations.

8. Provide affordable health care for all Americans through adoption of single payer Medicare for all.

9. Slow and reverse climate change through carbon emissions taxes on polluters, and returning these taxes and penalties as tax cuts for the working middle class that has been victimized by these corporations.

10. Take big money out of politics, by fighting the Citizens United Supreme Court case, requiring public financing of all campaigns at all levels, and full disclosure of all campaign contributions to all candidates for any public office at any level.

Wisconsin is a clarion call to all progressives and liberals that they cannot simply lie down and take what they are getting, but must FIGHT for change and reform, because no one is going to give it to them simply because they ask! The fight to overcome the right wing extremism that has taken hold in the House of Representatives and many state governments has just begun!

Focus On Bullying: Schools, State Governors, Tea Party Congressional Republicans, And A Supreme Court Justice!

Ronald Leave a comment

It is very sad that this nation is witnessing so many examples of bullying as a method of taking advantage of others.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama held a White House Conference on Bullying Prevention today to draw attention and concern to the growing bullying problem faced by young children, teenagers and early 20s youths in schools and colleges, either because of social pressures, or their sexuality, physical characteristics, or ethnic or religious heritage, often leading tragically to suicides. President Obama even said he had been bullied as a child because of his big ears. A lot of this bullying also occurs on the internet.

But it is not just an issue of young people being bullied. It manifests itself in so many other ways in our political system today, with bad manners and rudeness becoming endemic!

We have Governors such as Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, Chris Christie of New Jersey, and John Kasich of Ohio, among others, who are bullying public servants who have dedicated their lives to working for their communities as teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers, prison guards, social workers, librarians and other fields of public service, and now are facing the loss of basic labor rights to collective bargaining that have been long held.

Workers having basic rights of organizing is a human rights issue for anyone in a democracy, and for Wisconsin to bypass the Democrats in their State Senate and strip workers of their basic rights in an unethical and slimy way is despicable beyond belief! Scott Walker is clearly a bully and a political thug, and the other Governors are no better, as they all proclaim, as do Republicans nationally, that we all have to “share the pain”, with the wealthy and corporations however not part of that equation, just the middle class and the poor. There is no sense of morality or decency in these men and their party as they take us back to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when labor was first trying to organize to protect the rights of workers.

One hundred fifty years of progress is being wiped out by these right wing fanatics who will stop at nothing to give tax breaks to the rich and the corporations and harm the masses of the nation, who are facing attacks both on their homes and their employment, and being expected to pay more and get less, squeezing the middle class down into poverty!

But the same tactics of confrontation, arrogance and belligerence are also demonstrating themselves in Congress, as the Tea Party freshmen in the House and a small band of Tea Party supporters in the Senate are showing their disdain for civility and rational thought!

And even the Supreme Court is witnessing bullying, primarily by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, becoming more contemptuous of his fellow Justices when they go against his views. As he nears the 25th anniversary of his elevation to the Court, he is becoming more obnoxious and insufferable than ever!

When will civility and decency return to America in its schools, its government leaders, and even the Supreme Court? Unfortunately, it seems not anytime soon!

The Tea Party Movement Declares War On John Boehner! The True Insanity Destroying The Republican Party!

Ronald 3 Comments

If the Republican Party did not process the reality of the danger of the Tea Party Movement on their party and its future, it should now be very clear!

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips has declared war on Speaker of the House John Boehner, due to the fact that Boehner seems not to understand that the Tea Party Nation means what it says, that $100 billion must be cut from the present fiscal year budget, and instead the House majority Republicans have settled on $61 billion instead.

The fact that the $61 billion is a reckless cut that will hurt the poor, the sick, the elderly, the young, and veterans has no effect on Phillips and his ilk, so therefore he now suggests that John Boehner himself seems not to get the message, and that someone needs to come along and challenge Boehner in his congressional district in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area to teach Boehner a lesson, and make clear to the GOP who is the boss of the future!

The Republican party has gone to bed with a radical right faction that is very willing to destroy the party in its mad race to the 19th century Gilded Age!

If Boehner and other GOP leaders allow this insanity to continue, and if the state governors continue to follow the destructive path of Scott Walker in Wisconsin, John Kasich in Ohio, Chris Christie in New Jersey, and Rick Scott in Florida, then the Republican Party will be totally destroyed by this cancer eating it up alive!

It is time to take a stand and say NO to this destructive, anarchistic movement which has no good purpose except to destroy the middle class, and put all of it into total poverty!

But the good thing is that the Tea Party Movement will discover it has met its match, as the middle class and the poor will organize and back the Democratic Party as the true promoter of the interests of the vast majority of the American people!

The House Republican Budget: Very Clear What The Party Is Trying To Do To America!

Ronald Leave a comment

The House of Representatives Budget plan devised by the majority Republicans is a clear cut attack on the middle class and the poor, and all of the social and economic progress of the 20th century Presidents and Congresses which brought prosperity and a growing middle class to American society!

The budget document is an obscene attempt to promote the super wealthy and corporate agenda at the expense of the middle class, and the poor, and with no compassion or conscience displayed at all!

Imagine this:

1. The destruction of 700,000 jobs due to the budget cuts.

2. Cutting of three million low income people from community health centers.

3.Cutting of food and health care assistance to pregnant women, new mothers, and children.

4. Major cut in funds for Head Start.

5. End of federal funding for National Public Radio and PBS.

6. Forcing states to fire teachers and aides, making class sizes dramatically larger.

7. Cutting of some or all financial aid to over 9 million college students who are low income or middle income.

8. Slashing of funds to the National Institutes of Health, cutting research on cancer, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons diseases.

9. Cutting all support of Planned Parenthood, and family planning programs.

10. Putting 10,000 veterans into homelessness because of cuts in housing vouchers.

Other plans are in the works to prevent all abortions, cut the Environmental Protection Agency ability to protect against industrial pollution, and to do nothing to create new jobs, hoping to make economic conditions worse, with the hope that the American people would blame the Democrats and President Obama for the poorly performing economy!

This is a time for all decent people to make clear through calls and emails to their Congressmen and Senators that they will not tolerate the war on America’s middle class and the poor being perpetrated by the Republican Party!

It is time that excuses for budget cuts be replaced by tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations, who have to take responsibility on the national and state levels to help resolve the inequities that exist in America. They have received enough benefits over the past ten years, and really the past thirty years, and it is time to pay up as good, responsible Americans!

Are Muslim Citizens Threats To Homeland Security? The Peter King Committee Hearings And The Real Threat To The Nation!

Ronald Leave a comment

New York Republican Congressman Peter King, a member of the House since 1993, is the new Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and is about to conduct hearings on what he calls the Islamic threat to America presented by disloyal Muslims in American society.

King can certainly give several examples of Muslims in America who have been proved to be engaged in terrorist activities, fortunately stopped by excellent intelligence activities by cooperation between federal and state government officials. With the tragic exception of the Fort Hood massacre by a Muslim soldier, all of the attempts have been prevented.

But are we to say, for instance, that all community college students should be considered dangerous and worthy of investigation by the Homeland Security Committee, because of Jared Lee Loughner shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, which led to six deaths and thirteen wounded?

Are we to say that all white Christians who had been in the military should be investigated because of Timothy McVeigh blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people and wounding nearly a thousand people?

We cannot allow the Islamic haters in this country, many of them Christian fundamentalists, to anger and provoke good, law abiding Muslims, several million among us and growing, into hating the nation they willingly migrated to or have grown up in as citizens, to feel they are being persecuted or scapegoated, particularly when Muslim soldiers are fighting for us, and in many cases, have helped report and crack plots by the miniscule number of Muslims who have conspired against us!

What Peter King is doing is really the new McCarthyism, loose labeling people as Communists, and now substituting Muslims for Communists!

It is also important to point out that Peter King has a “skeleton” in his closet, his strong advocacy for the terrorist Irish Republican Army in its long war against British control of Northern Ireland. Can a person who supported terrorism actions against America’s strongest ally, Great Britain, be taken seriously when he claims to be fighting terrorism by promoting insecurity among law abiding Muslims, who are certainly over 99 percent of all Muslims?

And it should be pointed out that IF King really wishes to investigate terrorism threats, look to the hundreds of such groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, and Ku Klux Klansmen!

The number of such groups are at an all time high of 1,002, with many of them so called “Patriot” groups that have grown dramatically since Barack Obama became President, and believing that the federal government is the “enemy”!

And if one counts groups that go beyond just hate groups and Patriot groups to include nativist extremist groups which are a threat to ethnic, racial, religious and sexual orientation minorities, then the total is 2,145, a 40 percent increase from 2008-2009 and a 22 percent rise in 2009-2010!

Also realize that many Republican politicians and talk show hosts on radio and television use loose rhetoric, and are encouraging the paranoia and hate by their loose use of language!

So only when Peter King is willing to investigate and publicize the far greater threat from right wing hate groups would his committee be seen as doing something worthy of our support!

The Largest Percentage Of Homeless Children Since The Great Depression And The Republican Response Nationwide: Cut Programs Which Benefit Children!

Ronald Leave a comment

As Sixty Minutes on CBS reports, the growing number of homeless children who are living in weekly motels or in cars is reaching an alarming level, soon to be an estimated 25 percent of children of all races and ethnicities, the greatest since the Great Depression, and in actual number an all time high!

And what is the response of Republican Governors and the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives? Cut spending on education, health care, housing, nutrition, and all other programs, while making major concessions to corporations and rich people by cutting taxes and regulations!

We are seeing the true nature of the GOP! They DO NOT CARE about the effect on children of their policies, and they DO NOT CARE about anything but gaining the financial backing of the elite upper class!

If anyone with a rational mind had doubts, the GOP takeover in many states and the House of Representatives is proving just how nasty and vicious they really are! They do not care what happens to the poor or middle class, and are presiding over the greatest increase in poverty ever, and nonchalantly go about their business of being heartless and insensitive!

Speaker of the House John Boehner may cry when interviewed, but he fails to cry for what is most important: damage to the future generation that will grow up to hate their government for doing nothing to make their childhood a positive experience!

Children cannot be blamed for the misfortunes of their parents, and should NEVER be victims of a political party which only cares they be born, and then says in basic terms, to hell with you as you are now on your own, and don’t expect government to intervene in your behalf!