Now that the Paulson Plan has failed to pass the House (at least this time around) the question everyone seems to be asking is: Where do we go from here?
This Is What Country First Looks Like
Pay attention Senator Obama
Senator McCain took a lot of grief from all sides on his decision to suspend his campaign to go to Washington to work on the bail out. It was widely seen as a political stunt. Democratic congressional leaders derided it as injecting Presidential politics into the situation. Senator McCain believed it was the right thing to do. Senator Obama thought it was a better idea to only go when he could no longer avoid the challenge laid down by McCain(and reinforced by the call from President Bush).
Saturday saw a continuation of this same theme.
Where Do We Go From Here
How to Navigate the Mess Now That We Know How We Got Here
In my last piece I esteblished some clear evidence that the government was complicit in creating this “crisis” that we are in (continuing my aversion for the word crisis). This piece is aimed at finding a sensible way to correct the current problem without continuing the circumstances that got us here.
Trying to Find Out How We Got Here
Is your head spinning too?
Like many of you, I am trying to wrap my head around the “crisis” that we are in (I hate that word…thus the scare quotes). I’m going to try to piece together a few good articles and tidbits from bloggers to help us all understand this better.
Lets Take Out Another Palin Smear
The rape kit nonsense
Over the course of the last few weeks the left and their willing accomplices in the Mainstream Media have been putting forth smear after smear about Governor Sarah Palin in hopes that something will stick. One of the latest (of many) is the the Governor charged rape victims for the test kits that the police administer in the process of collecting evidence.
Seeing Russia From Alaska
Have you ever played the Telephone Game? You pass a phrase on from person to person eventually winding up with the phrase being told to the person who started it. By the time the message gets back to the person it usually barely resembles the original. Such is the case with Palin’s “quote” about seeing Russia from her back yard.
Ann Althouse links to this piece in the Boston Globe that includes the real thing.
“They’re our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”
Yup, barely resembles the original in this attempt at the game too.
src="http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4499/tmrxlogo1dw7.jpg"
style="border:2px solid #dbd9d6;">
MO-02: Do You Know Who You Are Running Against?
Because Democrat Bill Haas doesn’t seem to.
He’s airing an ad on local radio station KTRS. In the ad he attacks Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Last I checked his opponent was Congressman Todd Aiken.
He hits Palin on the Bridge to Nowhere. He uses a line reminiscent of the one that has been used on Rudy Giuliani. He says that “a noun, a verb and the lie about the bridge”.
Charlie Rangel: Cheating Every Which Way He Can[Update]
Rep Charlie Rangel
(D-NY)*
just can’t help himself. Via JammieWearingFool
BIG WHEEL BENZ THE RULES
Rep. Charles Rangel has been using a House of Representatives parking garage for years as free storage space for his old Mercedes-Benz - a violation of congressional rules and a potential new tax woe for the embattled lawmaker, The Post has learned.
The 1972 silver sedan is registered to Rangel, who is already under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, and is parked in a coveted section of an indoor lot, near elevators that lead to his office.
~snip~
A House Web site on parking regulations informs anyone with a space that, under IRS regulations, the benefit of the free parking is considered “imputed income” and must be declared to the government.
The spaces are valued by the House at $290 per month, the site says - about the monthly cost of leasing a space in a private DC-area garage.
If the car has been in that space since its license plates were surrendered four years ago, the imputed income would be nearly $5,000.
Obama: No, I Didn’t Interfere With That Agreement, I Interfered With a Different One
The new way to claim that you aren't guilty is by saying you are.
Amir Taheri broke the news the other day that Senator Obama tried to delay an agreement on the troop levels in Iraq. This brought up the question of “Did Obama violate the Logan Act?”. As I stated the other day, Obama’s clearest defense of the Logan Act would be to claim that he was under the authority of the State Department (a highly dubious outcome). Alas, Senator Obama went with a different route:
OBAMA OBJECTS by Amir Taheri
The Obama campaign has objected. While its statement says my article was “filled with distortions,” the rebuttal actually centers on a technical point: the differences between two Iraqi-US accords under negotiation - the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA, to set rules governing US military personnel in Iraq) and the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA, to settle the legal basis for the US military presence in Iraq in the months and years ahead).
His defense is that he didn’t interfere with the Status of Forces Agreement, but that he did interfere with the Strategic Framework Agreement. My question to the Senator is this: How does this still not constitute a violation of the Logan Act? Are you or are you not still guilty of interfering in the foreign policy of the Bush Administration (something that I showed the other day was the sole property of the Administration)?
Alas, the Logan Act has no teeth. Otherwise this would surely end Senator Obama’s chances at the White House.
src="http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4499/tmrxlogo1dw7.jpg"
style="border:2px solid #dbd9d6;">
Obama and the Logan Act
The Charges
In the September 15th edition of the New York Post, Amir Taheri reports that Senator Obama attempted to influence the Iraqi government with regard to the troop withdrawals from Iraq.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”
Just How Wealthy Are We As a Country?
Via reason’s blog Hit and Run you can check out this interactive tool that shows you what countries are spending on different classes of goods. If you click on over there and check out the “Recreation” tab, you will see something that I find to be quite telling.
MO-GOV: Kenny Hulshof Gets Bit By Campaign Stupids
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof (current U.S. House of Representative from MO-09) unveiled his education plan today.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof said Missouri has a problem. The state ranks 47th in expenditures for higher education. Hulshof said that is unacceptable and that if elected he would funnel more money to the state’s colleges and universities as well as increase scholarships to needy students.
~snip~
The plan calls for the creation of the Missouri Prosperity Initiative, which will emphasize biotechnology, engineering, math and chemistry. The $5 million initiative would provide funding for schools that could obtain a two-to-one match from either the private sector of philanthropic organizations. Within that initiative, a Missouri Eminent Scholar Endowment Fund would be created for colleges to lure professors who could bring research dollars to their campus.
Hulshof plans to increase funding for the state’s colleges and universities through a new funding formula. The formula would begin in Fiscal Year 2011. It would increase funding to higher education by the rate of inflation, plus two percent.
Color me crazy, but am I the only one that cringes when I hear the words “increase” and “funding” in the same sentence when talking about education? Why, oh why Kenny, do we want to continue to throw money at this problem when it hasn’t worked? Isn’t it time we found a better solution? Why not try cutting funding? Maybe then the colleges will have to compete for students’ and parents’ money, not taxpayers.
src="http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4499/tmrxlogo1dw7.jpg"
style="border:2px solid #dbd9d6;">
A Sea of Red In St. Louis
Road to the Convention Rally 8-31-08
On Sunday I had the opportunity to attend the McCain/Palin Road to the Convention Rally in O’Fallon, MO (just west of St. Louis and we call everything around here St. Louis). This was my first political rally that I had ever attended. I was already pretty excited for the rally earlier in the week because of the newness. When I stopped by the local Victory 08 office, the workers were already saying that the buzz for the event was higher than that of President Bush’s visit to the area in 2004. This didn’t really surprise me. Saint Charles County is probably one of the reddest areas of the state and has increasingly become so since 2004 (I imagine your surprise at finding out that the Republican dominated county has lower taxes than the Democrat dominated St. Louis County next door.) My excitement for the rally reached a fever pitch on Friday morning. Senator McCain had announced that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would be his running mate. The handful of RedState and Minority Report regulars that I converse with on a regular basis will attest that I couldn’t stop talking about the rally. Not only was I going to be part of the send off to Minnesota, I was now going to be witness to the future of the party (because make no mistake about it, the crop of young, reform minded candidates that we have is the future of the party).
