Don’t Do It Texas!

I usually ignore fringe political candidates because they don’t generally get elected. Texas has more than its share of far- right politicians, and we now have one at the state/national level in Ted Cruz. I hope we don’t double down by electing David Barton to unseat Senator John Coryn. I’m certainly not a fan of John Cornyn, but if it’s a choice between him and David Barton; I’ll campaign for John Cornyn.



David Barton is a frequent guest on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze show; that alone should tell you something. Mr. Barton says he is a Christian historian but is known to make things up. This is how he ties abortion to climate change. For some reason, God spends an awful lot of time worrying about Republican politics.

“1. America voted in politicians who support abortion rights.
2. In so doing, we “opened the door to the curse,” which includes floods, tornadoes, murder and pedophilia.
Back in the days of early America, Barton explained, if crazy weather was happening, the first thing leaders would do is “call for a national day of repentance, humiliation, fasting and prayer … and today we’re saying, ‘Oh no, it’s global warming.’”
In reality, he said, “We opened a door that lost God’s protection over our environment and that’s our choice.”

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/04/potential_senate_candidate_david_barton_explains_how_abortion_caused_climate_change/

Senator John Cornyn seat won’t be up for another year but it’s better to nip it at the bud.

I’ll be watching the Alabama’s congressional race where an establishment
Republican governor is getting challenged by a Tea Party/birther (whose hero is Ted Cruz) named Dean Young. It’ll be a test as to whether ideology will trump common sense. The other test will be in Virginia where the Democrat will likely win.

I used to dismiss all the nonsense but Colorado will have a secession initiative on the ballot tonight.

Our newspaper ran an editorial condemning David Dewhurst for his talk about impeaching President Obama, but I wish they would have included some other Texas legislators for doing the same such as our own Blake Farenthold.

Shutdown Hangover

With just nine days until we default on our debt for the very first time in our history, the media is trying to be the first to inform us as to the reason.  

The New York Times,Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s New York Times article also reports that the" David and Charles Koch, and their affiliated groups, threw some pretty big bucks around. Freedom Partners distributed $200 million to various “grassroots” anti-Obamacare groups. Meanwhile, the Americans for Prosperity plunked down $5.5 million for anti-Obamacare television ads. Freedom Partners also paid an additional $115 million to the egregiously misnamed Center to Protect Patient Rights. Meanwhile, the youthful and comparatively thrifty Generation Opportunity spent a scant $740 thousand on their creepy Uncle Sam ad. in hopes of scaring us away from Obamacare’s state health insurance exchanges.”

Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell had another theory.  He said that the GOP was not that dumb, and this is an effort to destroy the imperial presidency, which they started with Richard Nixon.  Senator Ted Cruz is being described as a Sarah Palin with a brain, so he used his talent and went around the country pledging to destroy Obamacare to the delight of the base.  Now, you have Republicans wanting to vote for a clean CR, but they are afraid of being exposed as being a RHINO and getting a challenger from the right.  The GOP does not see a clear path to the presidency anytime in the future, so the only thing they have left is to destroy President Obama and his agenda.  The reason their initial plan failed was that President Obama stood his ground, and did not negotiate with the hostage takers.  This left the tea party dumbfounded, so they came up with this “the president won’t negotiate” ploy to get sympathy for their effort.  According to latest polls, the GOP is getting a majority of the blame for the shutdown.

That was fairly heated but informative discussion about the shutdown on this morning’s episode of “Morning Joe.” The cast of characters included Carl Bernstein, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Nicole Wallace, Matt Lewis,Eugene Washington and Bill Kristol.  It became pretty evident that Bill Kristol does not like President Obama one bit, saying that he was the exact opposite of FDR.  Eugene Washington reminded Mr. Kristol, that the same GOP demonized FDR while he was trying to implement Social Security.  Bill Kristol shot back “ FDR was not at 45% during this time of his presidency.” Well, that’s because a lot more people were democrats back then. 

 Matt Lewis said that young evangelicals were no longer following the GOP because of their views on the social issues.  He also said that President Obama Hillary Clinton followed the philosophy of Noam Chomsky, who wrote a book (game palm) which preached hate and promoted ideas on how to demonize your opponent.  No one on the panel, mentioned that the GOP had Lee Atwater doing the same for them.

Carl Bernstein kept Nicole Wallace in check throughout the segment by refusing to let her say that Obamacare was a government-run health care system.  Joe Scarborough tried to make the best use of Mika running into some Democrats who did not like Obamacare.  She had to explain that the people she talked with were angry with Congress, the shutdown, and Obamacare was just thrown in with it.

We will be the losers if our country defaults or even appears to be defaulting.  My IRA will lose value and our Social Security checks might be delayed but that’s minor compared to people who would lose their jobs.  This country will lose any recovery gains that we have been making..  A default is a lot more than 535 winners and losers.

Those lousy Poll Numbers

Joe Scarborough was so happy with this morning’s poll numbers that I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a starring role in the next Geico commercial.  He must’ve run those poll numbers about three of four times during the three hours of “Morning Joe.” His co-host, Mika Brzezinski, showed a poll of the Virginias governor’s race where the Democrat was winning by five points, and then out of nowhere, Joe pulled out an email on his iPhone showing Governor Chris Christie having a 40 point lead in his race.

Towards the end of the show, Ezra Klein and Chuck Todd brought Joe Scarborough back down to earth by saying that those numbers are all too common just before another fiscal crisis.  They said that the president’s poll numbers were on a similar trend with those of the current Congress.  One poll showed that the country wants to tie spending cuts to raising the debt limit by 62% but like always, they don’t want to cut programs that they like.  The president will use the bully pulpit to explain his reason for not negotiating a settlement over the debt limit.  He will say that we should not hold the good faith and credit of the United States government hostage.  If the GOP decides to call his bluff, the government will shut down, and they will take the penalty for doing that.

I will continue to say that the GOP is great at campaigning, but they can’t govern.  They have an endless supply of legislators, strategists, and spokesmen for special-interest groups, who won’t turn down an opportunity to get on television to express their views.  It’s rare to see a Democrat on a Sunday talk show and when they do show up, they’re usually outnumbered by 5 to 1.  The GOP is like a prizefighter who continues to throw body punches and at the end of the fight it takes its toll.  Yes, Democrats are winning the issue and elections but the outcomes are closer than they need to be.

Right now Democrats are silent munching on their popcorn and enjoying the civil war between the different factions of the GOP.

Joe Scarborough and former Republican Party chairman, Michael Steele, got into a verbal fight this morning over the strategy of Ted Cruz.  Joe Scarborough seems to think that only the opinions of George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Scott Walker other conservatives like them matter.  Michael Steele tried to explain to him that the grassroots doesn’t really care about their opinions and that set Joe off; causing him to say something like this “don’t come on my show and try to lecture me on what the little people in the streets think.” Senator Ted Cruz appeals to a certain constituency, who are tired of establish Republicans who say they are for small government but continue to spend like there’s no tomorrow, and then keep losing presidential elections.  These constituents say, “if we’re going to lose- let’s do it our way.” It’s a 97 to 98% conservative purity group who will never compromise.  I agree with Michael Steele, we can see evidence of that locally by the comments made on our VA forum. 

We may all make fun of Senator Cruz, but he accomplished what he set out to do; raise money, gain star power, and he drove a stake through the hearts of establish Republicans.  Senator Tom Coburn got a lot of angry phone call from his tea party constituency, even though he has the highest rating of all conservatives in Congress.

A perpetual cycle

This morning Joe Scarborough brought on a lot a conservative’s to agree with him that this whole defund Obamacare fiasco is Ted Cruz’s fault. I don’t like Ted Cruz either, but I can see through that smoke screen. This is being portrayed as Ted Cruz’s suicidal pact but if that is so, then the legislators who passed the recent congressional resolution bill, supplied the gun, ammunition and a bottle of liquor for him to complete his mission. All the GOP senators like the bill the House sent but they realize it will only take 51 votes to strip the defunding Obamacare out of the bill and send it back to the John Boehner.

Ted Cruz had to negotiate a deal with Harry Reid to allow him to appear to be filibustering a bill that hasn’t come up for vote. In essence he’s really filibustering the GOP bill. Unless Ted Cruz can garner 41 votes, he won’t be able to stop Harry Reid and the Democrats from voting for a clean bill without defunding Obamacare. Let’s not forget the other obstacle; the president’s signature.

The perpetual cycle goes all the way back to Bill Clinton but the tea party is still living on the results of the 2010 election. They are using the results of that election to convince themselves that America is on their side. Never mind the fact that the 2008 Democrat’s number one issue was healthcare reform. The Democrats won both chambers and the executive branch in 2008 and in 2012 they gain seats in the Senate and retained the presidency against the opposing candidate saying that he was going to repeal Obamacare… on day one. Joe Scarborough said those people did not like big government but the panel corrected him by saying that they seem to love Social Security and Medicare. Cokie Roberts surprise me by saying that the tea party dismisses President Obama and she sees a lot of racism in their rhetoric.

We’re only re-litigating the healthcare law because conservatives have never accepted it. A lot of Republicans have never accepted the legitimacy of the current president. Republicans have this tendency to ignore polls, results, or laws they don’t like. There are still some old school Republicans who accepted the results of the 2012 elections and said “ Obamacare is now the law of the land.” Of course he wants to retain his speakership, so today he singing a different tune.

Let’s talk a little reality. The Affordable Care Act is unique because the rules are set up as a compromise between government and private insurance companies. Republicans could never repeal ACA and replace it with a plan of their own because insurance companies would not cooperate with them. Think about that, pharmaceutical companies made a pact with the government before there were ever any serious talks about a healthcare plan. The insurance companies agreed to insure the uninsurable but only after being offered millions of new customers (many being the less risky young employees) and moving more people to Medicaid. If this were to go down in flames, why would private companies ever agree to make another deal with government? The reality is that they wouldn’t and we would see health care premiums go out the roof again and then we would only be left with a single- payer universal health care system.

Senator Claire McCaskill Said the Democrats would not deal on delaying the individual mandate because it would mess up the funding mechanism of the program. The senator also corrected Joe Scarborough, when he tried to spread the myth that Congress was exempt from Obamacare. She said that Congress and their staff will continue to purchase insurance off the exchanges but the GOP is trying to take away the employer contribution (taxpayer funded portion) but that would be unfair; if it didn’t apply to all federal employees.

A lot of misconceptions are fueled by ignorance and unwillingness to research. For example, our local newspaper had a story about a bipolar person finally getting some help and they were called out by Matt Maples. He said he had 23 years of experience and he had not heard of spouses not being allowed on their husband’s VA policy.

According to The VA’s website:
Family Members of Veterans
Under certain circumstances, family members of Veterans are eligible for health benefits. Some of the programs offered include the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA), Spina Bifida (SB), Children of Women Vietnam Veterans (CWVV), Foreign Medical Program (FMP) and Caregiver.  Using these programs may reduce or eliminate your cost for medical supplies, office visits or prescriptions.
CHAMPVA
A health care benefits program that provides coverage to the spouse or widow(er) and to the dependent children of a qualifying sponsor who:

• is rated permanently and totally disabled due to a service-connected disability, or
• was rated permanently and totally disabled due to a service-connected condition at the time of death, or
• died of a service-connected disability, or
• died on active duty, and
• The dependents are not otherwise eligible for Department of Defense TRICARE benefits.

Under CHAMPVA, VA shares the cost of covered health care services and supplies with eligible beneficiaries.

A lot room for interpretation…If  I were in that situation I would call the VA for my unique situation and not depend on someone who thinks they know.

What Did We Learn (if anything) Yesterday?

The Sunday talk shows have become a testing ground for new talking points. Republicans are now trying to switch the blame of a government shutdown on Senate Democrats and the president because they won’t negotiate the repeal of Obamacare. Senator Ted Cruz is trying to say Harry Reid will use every trick in the book to strip out the repeal of Obamacare portion of the bill. That’s not a trick, Mr. Cruz, that’s normal procedure. He said that Harry Reid should not pass a partisan bill. Hello, that’s what the House of Representatives did.

Here’s the deal, as long as the president of the United States is named Obama, the Affordable Health Care Act will stay intact.

The GOP has won the continuing resolution battle so far, because the sequester spending cuts are part of this bill. That’s something that the house Democrats wants to look at when the bill comes back to them.

Yesterday, Chris Wallace put up his partisan bullet points on how terrible Obamacare was, but he never mentioned that the law was doing quite well in states that have accepted the transition. Senator Claire McCaskill was ready when he mentioned that Walgreens was no longer covering their part-time employees. She explained that Walgreen's is issuing vouchers to their part-time employees, so they can purchase much cheaper health insurance. Chris Wallace tried to say that the vouchers might not be enough, but that is just an assumption. The president has always said that if you can come up with something better; than by all means do it. Chris Wallace then mentioned that the president promised that if you liked your current healthcare policy with your company, you would be able to keep it. The president did not envision the steps companies would take to deny health care benefits. I guess you could choose to blame the president if you like, but it’s a weak argument if you ask me.

 I advise reading J.R. Ortega, of the Victoria Advocate, column about the health care issue in today’s newspaper or you can read the on line version here.

I’m one who believes in polls but I never thought that we would use the results to try and repeal a law. Social Security and Medicare would not get 100% likeability in a poll. I’m surprised that we used the poll to decide whether we should bomb the Syria or not. It’s funny; the poll that states that 90% of Americans favor background checks continues to be ignored.

I don’t know why “Meet the Press” continues to invite Wayne La Pierre of the NRA to be their guest after another gun mass murder. All they have to do is replay what he said the last time and double down on it. Now he’s said that there weren’t enough good guys with guns. He was calling for those in a military to be armed on a base where civilians are the majority. When I was in the service, our rifles were locked up for a reason. We had the military police for security. Mr. La Pierre’s statements have become weirder and weirder. David Gregory asked the chief lobbyist for the gun manufacturers, why it is in reasonable to require a background check for gun sales between strangers. Mr. La Pierre said “ just down the road(Washington, DC) 13-year-old girls were being trafficked, illegal drug deals were being made, and now you want two hunters to be under the thumb of the government when they purchase a hunting rifle from each other.” We should stop fooling ourselves. Congress will not do anything except maybe make some small changes that are cleared beforehand with the NRA. The changes will have to come from communities, where the real power is. Only 35% of household own guns, so a community is not beholding to the NRA. When those communities get sick and tired of all the violence, steps will be taken as they were in New York.

Oh, Whatever

This morning was one of the few times when I have ever agreed with Joe Scarborough, but I approved when he said that the non- crazy wing of the Republican Party is starting to realize that the wing nuts of their party have lost all sense of reality. It’s one thing to argue about economics’; it’s another thing to rally around shutting down the government over an obsession to defund Obamacare. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Senator Ted Cruz tell CNN’s Candy Crowley that President Obama would agree to defund Obamacare under the right conditions. Joe Scarborough laughed hysterically when conservative/ libertarian Senator Jeff Flake responded to an ad that was running against him because he refused to defund Obamacare. Senator Flake responded with a simple tweet “oh, whatever.”

I’ve got to remember to tell myself “oh, whatever” when I see a post stating that hospitals don’t make a huge profit and that the insurance companies and the government are the reason for the high cost of health care. Last night, Chris Hayes said a bag of saline, including the ingredients of salt and water cost about 44¢ but they charge the patient $191.00 and another $1000 for the use of the operating room. That one poster  I mentioned said that the charge for attending nurses and other costs were part of the saline cost but that’s not true. Every item that a hospital charges has its own unique price. I’m thinking how much my orthopedic surgeon saved the insurance company by using an outpatient service and sending me home the very same day.

Another “oh, whatever” moment is the fallacy that welfare is going to lead us to financial ruin. The $235 billion we spend on the non-working poor amounts to about 10% of the federal budget according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. There’s a formula using census data to figure out where this money goes. First you have to combine all the costs of such programs to come up with the base total. Then you have to subtract spending on the elderly, and the disabled. In that figure will be vets, children, survivors of parents who have died, people on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI. Finally we have to add up unemployment insurance, EITC and child tax credits understanding that people move in and out of these programs all the time. These programs come under the Non-discretionary spending and are required by law, so the battle is always about a percentage change or the amount of cost of living adjustments. You will see the GOP fixated on these programs in the upcoming budget battles and the Democrats will fight to keep the cuts as small as possible.

All the insignificant stuff will have to take a backseat to whatever we do militarily against Syria in the next few days. No serious person will question the amount of money we spend to send Syrian president, Bashar al Assad, a message that the international community will not tolerate the use of sarin gas on civilians or military personnel. The last I heard, it costs us about a million dollars to launch just one Tomahawk missile. According to the polls, Americans do not want us to engage in any type of military intervention in Syria but this is one of those cases where the president will have to take action despite the will of its citizenry. President Obama might have one of those “oh, whatever” moments.

Remember, don’t look for a new blog tomorrow but please keep checking because I might be back sooner than later…

Another Tea Party Summer?

Congress is taking another crack at passing immigration reform, but it’s 2007 all over again. It doesn’t matter how it’s packaged or how much data there is that proves that it’s to our economic benefit to pass a comprehensive immigration bill because the right wing of the GOP considers anything less than 100% attrition as amnesty. The right-wing does not want to address the 11 million undocumented people residing in our country other than to say “citizenship …never” and “let’s just secure the border.” There is language in the bill that calls for 90% of the southern border crossing being secured but there are people here  illegally from countries other than Mexico.

It’s pretty funny watching Senator Rubio trying to satisfy both sides of the issue while trying to maintain his credibility. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee thinks that he has found the answer. He upped the ransom that he will pay to get a few more Republican votes. His amendment will now include 700 miles of additional fencing, and he doubles the amount of the border patrol from 21,000 to 42,000. Remember we’re still in sequester mode but now he wants to hire more federal workers and spend millions more to extend the fence, even though the illegal border crossings are at net zero. All these sweeteners are just to pass a bill in the senate which doesn’t stand a chance in the other body unless Speaker Boehner relies on 100%  yes votes from the Democrats once again.

The Democrats are signing on to just about everything that appeases Republicans because they think they will outsmart their opponents in the long run. Even Michelle Bachmann understands the Democrats’ strategy. If the Senate passes a bipartisan comprehensive bill that has 70 votes in the affirmative, it will put the speaker on even more shaky grounds than he is in now. If by some miracle, the GOP controlled house passes their version of an immigration bill, it then has to go before a committee, so both versions can be merged. Will speaker Boehner stick with the Tea Party and destroy any chance of the GOP ever winning a national election or will he go to Nancy Pelosi ( hat in hand) and ask her for all the Democrats votes when he can only produce 20 or so? John Boehner can kiss his speakership good-bye if he does the latter.

The Republican base’s pep rally issues are front and center awaiting the 2014 mid-term elections. Yesterday, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Michelle Bachmann held an all day rally on the White House lawn. I will never understand why people who have so much distain for government, run for office. Their complaints ranged from Benghazi, abortion, the IRS, Obamacare, illegal immigration reform, President Obama and government in general. Ted Cruz called for abolishing the IRS; Rand called for the same, but he also said that he would never send foreign aid to countries that persecuted Christians. Rand Paul is testing the presidential waters for his eventual 2016 run. The crowd images I saw I saw had about as many anti-Rubio signs and there were anti-Obama signs. The call was for small government for the safety net and more government for abortion, NSA and border enforcement. The Libertarian Republicans still have to convince their non- libertarian members that they have to be scared of big brother snooping. It shouldn’t be that hard, they’ll try to use the IRS and Obamacare as examples of big brother can’t be trusted to do anything right.

We are seeing record abortions bills passed in GOP controlled states and in the House of Representatives, but it’s not because there is an increasing amount of abortions, it is for political reasons. The states that are passing the unconstitutional bills don’t care about the costs; both politically and monetary because they want this issue front and center. The Pro-lifers want a Supreme Court challenge where they think having five conservative judges gives them an excellent chance of overturning Roe v Wade. In the meantime, GOP lawmakers are the beneficiaries of the Pro-lifers money and votes.

I’m finally at the point where it’s pretty obvious where the lines are drawn on the gun, Obamacare and immigration issue. The pro- gun people watch the evening news, read their paper and listen to their radio and come to the right conclusion that our country is getting more violent. They don’t trust law enforcement to be at the precise time and place to protect them. They want as much firepower and ammunition as they think is necessary to protect themselves in any situation.

A lot of people don’t have the slightest idea of what it takes to insure 31million more people, because they never spent the time and effort it takes to learn how the Affordable Care Act will affect them. Those who have company paid insurance or those on Medicare and VA will not see much difference. A lot of people fear that the government will take away benefits that their company gives them and redistribute them to the uninsured. There will never be convinced that we pay for the overuse of the emergency rooms with increase premiums rates. I could go on and on but that’s for another blog.

The immigration bill opposition is pretty easy to understand . We live in south Texas, so a lot of people here think that it’s a Mexican issue. If that’s a case, then it’s about food stamps, welfare, more crime and the overburdened of our hospitals and schools. Those people will tune you out if you present facts that contradict what they already presume to know. Citizenship, hell no; that just legally puts them on the public dole. Some people still believe Americans will pick those crops, and they can say they will pay higher prices to make it happen because they know they never will. The more browning of America is the underlying issue. If you need more proof, you won’t have to look no further than our redistricting maps. I have yet to hear a reasonable answer as what to do with the 11 million people who either came to this country illegally or overstayed their visas.

I believe that you have to be blunt because sugarcoating an issue just prolongs the solution. There’s a lot to “tell me what you really think.” Think about it; that’s why we have all the back and forth about a legal document being translated into Spanish.

Am I the only who is curious about the tease of two homes being raided yesterday? I didn’t see a follow up on the evening news or in my morning newspaper.

Let That be a Lesson to You..Senator Ted Cruz

 

It was like a breath of fresh air when I saw Senator Dianne Feinstein hand the junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, his head as he sit there with that frozen smirk on his face. The very idea of a brand new senator questioning the constitutionally of a matter before the judiciary committee is laughable. All proposed Constitutional Amendments have passed through the Judiciary Committee; even Senator Feinstein’s initial ban of semiautomatic weapons.  Her legislation lasted 10 years without objection from the Supreme Court. Ted Cruz’s lectures are better suited for Tea Party rallies than they are on serious matters before the committee. 

Senator Feinstein held back a little because she had enough ammunition (no pun intended) to really embarrass Ted Cruz.  Yesterday, the final report on Sandy Hook was released.  It was reported that Adam Lanza fired off 152 rounds in less than five minutes.  He had one round in the chamber of his AR15 and a 30 round magazine and then switched them out four times. The mass murderer used one round in his semi-automatic hand gun to kill himself. She could have said, “Senator Cruz, Adam Lanza researched mass murders before he decided to act out his fantasy. If the Bush administration and the GOP would not have let the assault weapon ban sunset, the killer’s mom would not have been able to purchase the AR15 or the 30 round ammo clips. Do you think Adam Lanza would have tried this massacre with 14 ten round magazines?” Then she could have concluded by saying, “never mind, I yield the rest of my time.” 

 A few weeks ago, Senator McCaskill scolded the young Senator Cruz for insinuating that Chuck Hagel had received money from North Korea.  Senator Cruz is being dubbed, Carnival Cruz, these days because of his McCarthyism tactics. Ted Cruz is like having Allen West, Michelle Bachmann and Louie Gohmert all rolled into one person.  It’s a shame because Ted Cruz got his law degree from Harvard, so he’s not a dummy.  It’s shameful and how he’s using his antics for fund-raising and self-promotion.  I can’t place all the blame on him because GOP leadership is allowing him to get away with his behavior.  It’s highly unusual for a freshman senator to be on two prestigious committees.