I Would've Never Thought

Today, I was in and out of my doctor's office in 15 minutes and that included removing my stitches.  I thought that would be the highlight of my day, but I just may surpass the 100,000 page load counter sometime tonight.  It doesn't take much to please a 68-year-old  retiree.…:-0

I started this personal blog in October of 2010 as a means to vent.  I mostly ignored it until the Victoria Advocate switched to their Facebook book format.  Now I use it as a way to write my slant on topics that I'm interested in.

 When I got to the 90,000 mark, I started receiving  a lot of emails from Google, Yahoo and others trying to get me to support ads.  That's not me, because this is for fun.

I would gladly trade in 50,000 page loads  for 5000 more comments, but that's something that I have not accomplished.  I don't know if people are scared that I would delete their comments or that the subject of my blog, and my opinion is not worth commenting on.  It could be that they prefer a Facebook format, or that they don't want to be the only one commenting.  Getting more comments will be a priority.  Who knows I may only attract passive readers who don't like to comment.  I remember getting 100 comments for every blog that I posted at the VA but that had a much larger viewership.

“EA and that's the truth” set and exceeded the standard for local personal blogs. I can't replicate what she brings to blogging but I can thank for the help she gave me when I first started.
One goal will be reached an I'm now reaching out for more comments, so if you have any ideas e-mail me mjngmg@gmail.com.

Thanks a lot for all those who have read this blog and special thanks to those who have posted their comments.

Charm Offensive?

The media has termed the president’s recent outreach to republicans and as being a charm offensive tactic. The president is supposed to be all smiles as he listens attentively to the GOP concerns. Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell said that the president received a standing ovation from the Republican wing when he entered the house chamber and received the same as he was leaving. That’s good, those gestures offsets the warning of not getting too close to the president because it might hurt their chances of reelection. Doe we really have that many small mined hateful voters in America?

Last week, the house voted to defund ACORN even though it has been out of business for three years. The GOP also renewed their sights on repealing Obamacare, and are currently taking steps to ensure that the work provisions in the welfare program are strengthened; even though they were never weakened. The other day, Born2Bme enlightened me of their motives. I couldn’t understand why we were revisiting the issues of the 2008 and 2012 election. The house GOP is on a permanent reelection campaign, so they must constantly feed the red meat to their base. As I was watching a TV host explain the "free phone for votes" hyperbole being used as an Obama political strategy,  I decided to do a little fact checking. I was wrong because I didn’t think such a program existed, but I was right because it wasn’t an Obama “phones for votes” program. This is how Forbes magazine (no liberal rag) explained the program “The federal program wasn’t started by President Obama. It dates back to 1996, as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act did a number of things, including increasing internet access to doctors and patients in rural hospitals (for consults with specialists); subsidizing internet and phone coverage for schools and libraries and providing free or subsidized coverage for families who can’t afford it so that they have links to emergency and government services. The Act was not taxpayer funded… exactly. Taxpayers do pay for coverage but not via federal income taxes. Instead, the Act “mandated the creation of the universal service fund (USF) into which all telecommunications providers are required to contribute a percentage of their interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues.” So that little fee on your phone bill labeled USF? That’s what you’re paying for.”

As we go back and forth on what will and won’t get done, I can see the wheels turning on both sides, so we might get a small bargain but the differences are too huge to be reconciled in one or two legislative sessions. Paul Ryan and the GOP thinks that since they presented their plan to balance the budget in ten-years, the president should use the same parameters to counter their proposal. I’m glad that the president said that balancing the budget is not a priority but the path to bringing down the cost curve of the debt is. Republicans in the house and the senate are open to tax reform by eliminating tax loopholes but they differ on what to do with the savings. The GOP wants to cut tax rates with the savings but that’s just like moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic to keep it from sinking. They don’t mind eliminating the loopholes that the wealthy receive because they give it back to them in a form of a tax cut. The democrats want to use those savings to further reduce the deficit. The deficit is coming down on its own with the newly enacted tax revenues, so the democrats aren’t that keen on trading tax increases for a big entitlement reform package.

And yet we have another local yokel, Mike Beeson, who wrote a letter titled “Victoria doesn’t need federal grant money.” The writer takes a local teeny weenie solar project and compares it to the problems with our nations alternative fuels in a “drill baby drill” fashion. I don’t think anyone expected the grant to produce the next solar boom and besides energy experts all agree that solar will certainly be part of the mix as we continue our path to get off fossil fuels and our dependency on foreign oil. The writer doesn’t mention the tax incentives the oil companies receive nor does he mention their tax shelters in the Cayman Islands which are designed specifically to legally avoid U.S. tax.

Yesterday my trusty iPad broke so I'm going to Houston Saturday to hopefully get it repaired. While  I'm there I think I'll go to Costco and get me a jumbo bag of popcorn to enjoy as I watch the CPAC circus this weekend . I'm taping the whole event because I don't want to miss a word...:-)

Secession!..Are you kidding me?

I was willing to allow the Republicans to sulk for while but the media keeps bomb boarding me with stories of a new kinder, gentler GOP who's now willing to compromise. I don't believe a national party can do a 180°in a week's time. It's still the same people in office, and they're still not willing to raise the tax rates on the millionaires and billionaires. They think because they kept the House of Representatives,it  means that people do not want to raise taxes. I'll get back to that later.

Here in Texas, we have a lot of whiners who are acting like spoiled children over the election results. They (about 85, 000) have petitioned the White House for secession, even though our constitution doesn't allow secession. These low information citizens haven't the foggiest idea of what it would mean if they got their way. What they really are saying is that they don't want to live in a country unless a white republican is president. The White House is required to respond to the petitioners who gathered 25,000 signers, so I hope they use some low-level staffer for that purpose.

The GOP wants to ignore the exit poll where 68% said we should raise taxes on the top 2% as part of the plan to avoid going over the fiscal cliff. I still don't think the president has a mandate, but he does have a lot of leverage this time around. I do like the approach he is taking by negotiating from a position of strength. The president has requested $1.6 trillion in tax increases, which is twice the amount of the grand bargain he originally proposed. He would probably settle for $1.2 trillion in tax increases, which is in the middle. The GOP does not want to raise tax rates on the top 2%, even though we would see immediate results if that were to happen. They would rather talk about eliminating loopholes and deductions, which would have to be negotiated over a longer period of time. It's still about the arithmetic because eliminating loopholes will not get to $1.2 trillion of tax increases over 10 years. The extra revenue would have to come from eliminating the home-mortgage deduction and charitable contributions which will in turn hurt the middle class and slow the recent growth of the housing market. If nothing else, the Democrats put taxes back in the conversation because Republicans were trying to make a case that spending was the only problem. I think once we get over the tax increase barrier, it's going to be easier to talk about creating jobs and avoiding the fight over the debt ceiling.

Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal, said the GOP needs to stop being the “stupid party" and should stop catering to Wall Street and the rich. You can find similar statement from Newt Gingrich and other GOP surrogates, but the fact remains they were the ones leading the march to stupid. Bobbie Jindal pushed creationism on Louisiana schools, and Newt called President Obama “the food stamp president" who had a 'Kenyan, anti-colonial' world view." Paul Ryan said President Obama won because of a lot of urban votes. What's that supposed to mean? It's a known fact that people that live in the big cities outnumber those who live in rural areas. Then again, Paul Ryan says that the GOP has a mandate because they were reelected. I guess that he discounts the fact that the Democrats picked up at least eight seats (and they're still counting in Arizona) and that was against Republicans in gerrymandered districts. Democrats received more than 500,000 more votes than their republican opponents.

The GOP doesn't have a choice but to change because the days of saying, “I’m for smaller government, lower taxes and liberty" will no longer win elections. Voters want more than partisan talking points. The GOP can't just throw out Marco Rubio and expect to get the Latino vote because it's much more than immigration. The GOP lost the Asian vote by a lot, and they're usually conservative and have a high medium income. They also lost the young voter, the Catholic and the moderate voter. Election results are temporary because it was only two years ago that we thought that the Tea Party had a lot of political influence. We also thought that we couldn't beat all the big money for special-interest groups.

We mustn't lose sight that big money did win in downhill elections. It's said that Karl Rove only got his donors, a 1.29% margin on their investment, but that's only in the senate and presidential election. We didn't discuss global warming  at all or Afghanistan much, so we will continue not having a national discussion on those matters for a while. That suits the defense contractors and those who do not want t curb their greenhouse emissions.

Rand Paul's immigration proposals are to the left of any Democrat because he's insisting on a path to citizenship (with conditions) for the 12, million undocumented people who are already here. As a true libertarian, Senator Paul wants legislation to decriminalize marijuana use. He thinks he will get something done because no one questions his conservative credentials. We'll see.

The local Republicans are pretty quiet, but that's understandable because that's what I did after the 2000 election. The only difference is that I had to accept my minority status in this county, so I lost interest in the local and state issues (if I ever had any) and devoted all my attention on national issues. I accepted the saying that “the pendulum swings both ways" but our local conservatives will never accept that saying. Several local Republicans think that all they have to do is use the word “liberal" in the pejorative and say that they are conservative. That may work in this county but enjoy it while you can because being superior is always subjective.

On a lighter note,it will be interesting to hear from those who went to the see the movie "2016: Obama's America"  and were gullible enough to believe the theme.  Nah,like the Fox viewers they will continue to believe because it's easier than saying " I was wrong."