Party doesn’t matter. Big government is a goal and a comfort and a blessed pander opportunity for both major parties — one of which just happens to want lower taxes, and isn’t too terribly skeeved out by American flag lapel pins.
People keep telling me we can’t go third party to wipe out the current GOP ruling elite, then return as the new GOP — that we need to change them from within. But as others have pointed out, the GOP hasn’t put forth as it’s presidential nominee a conservative not already considered the putative front runner going in to the race, since Goldwater. Nixon. Ford. George H W Bush. Bob Dole. George W. Bush. John McCain. Nearly 50 years, with a brief Reagan revolution in between — one that the GOP has since been fighting to declare dead and over, even as the TEA Party strains to resurrect it.
I don’t know the answer. I do know that many of the TEA Party candidates elected in 2010 have already become GOP team players, having “learned the ways of DC.”
So what’s the answer?
I mean, there are what, 47 GOP votes in the Senate, and only 13 Senators voted to save $1 billion dollars by ending duplicative programs? Has a billion dollars really become such a pittance to these people that the cost-benefit analysis they’ve done tells them theirs more profit to be made in the electoral pander to “rural communities” than to standing on principle and actually taking a scalpel to this bloated federal Leviathan?
We are royally screwed.
So. Are we going to wait 50 more years? Because I don’t think we have the tie
Lindsay Graham is amongst the ayes. What does that mean? I ask because it seems out of place for Graham, when Orrin Hatch is a nay and it’s Orrin who has a potential Tea Party challenge to face in the primary, whereas Graham isn’t up for reelection for another four years.
I misread, sorry, Hatch is an aye. My bad.
Rubio is a nay. Ayotte is a nay.
Meghan’s coward daddy couldn’t even bother to vote
Isakson is the cash-for-clunkers genius – it makes sense he’d love duplicative wasteful spending
oops sorry Isakson was the new-home-buyer tax credit genius
It’s weird too hf to the extent that voting for the measure is a kind of freebie, since these people voting against it would see that it can’t pass anyhow, so why are they flashing their asses at the public? There’s got to be some other reason in play I think.
Don’t you know? Every single government program is critical and absolutely vital! And if you want to reduce any of them by so much as even a single dollar you are an evil person who wants to throw innocent poor people and senior citizens out into the street.
Clearly, even the staunchest of GOP stalwarts have to evaluate the political optics of every single vote. Can’t have principles causing you to vote for something that Democrats might call you names over.
Yes, it makes me want to puke. Or to quote Col. Frank Slade (Retired): “If I were the man I was five years ago, I’d take a flame-thrower to this place!”
Turns out the 99% like bread and circuses.
I guess I’m remindered of this what’s been trending for a couple three years now but I’ve no idea how you would connect the dots
I wish Coburn was a candidate for president. We are being destroyed by politicians voting for short term advantage and long term disaster. But the long term is very close now. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.
Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
(All royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans)
For a free PDF of my book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
I can’t believe I’m actually typing this but, yes, a 3rd party is starting to become an absolute necessity.
The only real question is: is it already too late for that?
(Figure that it would take quite some time to get any 3rd party w/ sufficient enough a voter base that it didn’t give the left free reign for a decade, letting them finish the job they started continued in ’06/’08.)
Yes, by about 100 years.
So what’s the answer?
The Tall Grass, maybe. Probably the Catacombs.
Well gee, they are going to save a billion here, right?
Oh wait.
There’s the whole or other parts of the Bill on the one hand, and the Coburn amendment on the other. I don’t see that Sessions is aiming at the Coburn amendment when he speaks of the Bill increasing spending. So as far as I can see, the disjoint puzzle remains.
This amendment was to cut spending by $1billion. Not end duplicative spending. Here is the entire text:
It would be very difficult to vote for this amendment if you have rural constituents. It would be like an Iowan Senator voting against ethanol subsidies. Even though both would be good for the country. This might be an unresolvable flaw in democracy.
DeMint has a pdf in the link I posted. Can’t get to it right now but it does mention duplicative spending.
I e-mailed Rubio, asking for his rationale. I’ll pipe up here when I get a response.
And so on.
Limbaugh has been running down Classical studies this morning, and just now seems to be building himself a retreat from his advance. If he only knew.
If he only knew.
Yeah. There’s Medieval Studies too.
Classical Studies are fine but taking out tens of thousands in loans to get the degree and then wondering why the great paying job doesn’t magically appear so you can pay that loan is not fine.
One really “nice” feature of “student loans” is they cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. You owe your soul to the government store.
Rush wasn’t exactly bothering to say Classical studies are fine though. But then I’m kinda picky on the subject.
I had to turn Rush off today when he was running down Classical Studies today. He seems to have the same problem as Hannity and Beck in that he can’t apprehend that college is supposed to make one a well-rounded person. If you prefer to cut to the chase; go to a nice trade school instead of “wasting” your time getting a liberal arts education.
“While serving worthy purposes, Rural Development programs predominately duplicate existing programs of nearly every other agency in the federal government and notably the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration”
Calling that ‘ending duplicative programs’ seems disingenuous to me. If DeMint chose to take that $billion and re-appropriate it to one of those duplicate programs, then I’d agree. But it’s not. It’s just taking $1 billion of ‘free’ money from someone. And if someone’s giving you free money, how can you vote against it, and expect to get re-elected? You can’t, so they didn’t.
We need to find a way to prevent government from giving money to special groups (in this case, rural people, of which I am currently one), or the democratic process will always favor the layabouts, at the expense of the workers. Hey, didn’t Rand say something about this?
Hell, I wish more people actually did read the classics and paid some attention to the Western Canon. Somehow, I don’t think this is the real problem.
There is room for both classic studies and more specific degrees. It is a red herring to point out that unless you go to college for something such as engineering, you are wasting your money.
The point is that much of what is taught in college is shit that they should have learned in high school. Then, many of these folks wouldn’t HAVE to go to college to be a manager at starbucks or whatever.
Then, of course, the studies of the classics in college wouldn’t be warmed over sophomore Enlish classes, and we’d actually have people who learned stuff for that money. Our economy cannot support the hordes of half-educated, non-specific college degrees that it is currently churning out.
The problem was that Limbaugh will talk out of his ass on subjects like this at times. He gets himself on a roiling boil against a political opponent like the silly kid whining about her debt and then spews nonsense about another subject, such as Classical Studies, he knows nothing about. Hence, as the complaints rolled in, his backtracking. It’s bull in a china shop syndrome.