Dennis Rodman, our blinged-out Mr. Ambassador, became the first American to meet Kim Jong-un since he became the new leader of North Korea. Rodman says “he wants Obama to do one thing, call him.” Unfortunately, the phones have not been working in Washington DC for several months. The President, John Boehner, and Harry Reid are unable to call each other, let alone place a call to North Korea. Verizon expects to have the problem fixed sometime after the 2014 mid-term election.
About this sequester thing: there’s a part of me which, the more I hear the administration cry “Doomsday!”, the more I wonder if it might turn out more like YTK. That is, nothing much happens. We just end up with lots of basements full of freeze-dried food and stockpiled ammo.
The feds obviously need to cut spending, but nobody’s up to the task. So maybe, if they can’t cut spending responsibly, let them cut it irresponsibly.
On the other hand, this may turn out to be one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever said.
The article “Obama and the Seussquester,” tells the story of the sequester in the language of Dr. Seuss. It comes from the Heritage Foundation, which is now headed by Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint, so you know it’s going to blame Obama for everything. Which it pretty much does. But hey–it’s FUN TO READ.
The Democrats, for their part, spin everything against Republicans. Both sides wander into alternate realities as they cast blame. But with this cute article by Amy Payne, Republicans totally destroy Democrats in the Spin Game. This is spin that, albeit not exactly intellectually honest, is nevertheless fun and creative. And, I should add, mostly dead-on accurate.
My only read gripe is that it’s written in prose, rather than in verse format. But enough with quibbles and nits.
So it is out of respect for Amy Payne’s creativity that I provide this link. And I expect my many conservative Facebook friends to gleefully share it with reckless abandon.
This came to me from a friend in Canada. I’m not going to even try to verify the numbers. They may be a couple years old, anyway. But that’s beside the point. The analogy with the household budget stands, regardless of how much people might want to quibble over actual numbers.
| U.S. Tax revenue: | $2,170,000,000,000 |
| Fed budget: | $3,820,000,000,000 |
| New debt: | $1,650,000,000,000 |
| National debt: | $14,271,000,000,000 |
| Recent budget cuts: | $38,500,000,000 |
Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
| Annual family income: | $21,700 |
| Money the family spent: | $38,200 |
| New debt on the credit card: | $16,500 |
| Outstanding balance on the credit card: | $142,710 |
| Total budget cuts so far: | $38.50 |
Get the picture?
During his response to the State of the Union address, Senator Marco Rubio paused to take a drink of water–from a Poland Spring bottle. Why is he getting water from Poland, which not too long ago was a communist country? Why isn’t he supporting American water? Are Americans not capable of producing water good enough for Senator Rubio?
Before I would ever vote for him for president, I would want a lot of related questions answered.
Since he’s not a white guy, and since his parents weren’t even American citizens when he was born, I’m not sure I can trust him to be a real American. In fact, he could very well be a Cuban sleeper agent.
Somewhere, I’ll bet, there is a Cuban birth certificate. I’m guessing Donald Trump is already searching for it.
So once again we come to the State of the Union Address, otherwise known as the Night of Empty Promises. At least President Obama can grandstand in a much more literate manner than his predecessors. Just looking for redeeming value.
I predict:
Well, I wrote to my Congressman. The first time I’ve ever done that. He’s a Republican in a very Republican district, though I don’t know much about him. Does writing to your Congressman make a difference? I don’t know. But I did it. And here’s my letter, which I submitted through his website.
This is my first letter, ever, to a Congressman.
My wife and I enjoy shooting. We own guns, and we both have concealed carry permits.
That said, I hope you’ll be open to the President’s proposals. I read through all of them and found very little that I would object to. There is a lot of hysteria about a war on the Second Amendment, and the government taking away guns, and the need to fight a tyrannical US government, but you and I know that this is an over-reaction. Too much of what is being said by gun rights advocates lacks intellectual integrity, and that angers me.
The President’s proposals dealt minimally with new gun restrictions, and placed much emphasis on issues of information sharing, school preparedness, and mental illness. These make good sense, and I would encourage you to support them. It would be a shame to see his proposals killed purely for partisan reasons, or to satisfy the gun lobby.
I do not support renewing the Assault Weapons Ban; it is an artificial category of weapons. However, I’m confident the Republic can survive its renewal. We, after all, seem to have weathered the previous 10 years of the ban without seeing the American way of life crumble before our eyes.
I am much more open to a limit on magazine capacity. While I do have some high-capacity magazines, and would like more, I can live without them.
The prevalence and accessibility of guns in American society means that, inevitably, massacres like Sandy Hook and Aurora will happen again. More innocent children WILL be slaughtered. It is an inevitable side effect of a society which reveres gun ownership. But there are common sense regulations we can impose which could cut down on the number of children and other innocents who are killed. The President outlined many good steps to take. I encourage you to give them the consideration they deserve.
Thank you.
Steve Dennie
In a few hours, the White House will announce their ideas for curbing the gun violence epidemic. I think I can safely (and cynically) predict that the NRA and other gun rights organizations will oppose every single idea, as they’ve been doing with tiresome predictability.
I’m mostly a gun rights person, but I’m really disturbed by their total intransigence. They respond to every idea by saying, “It won’t work. It wouldn’t have stopped….” and then they name one of the many massacres that have occurred. Argument by anecdote. I realize that these organizations are less about gun owners than they are about gun and ammo manufacturers, so that’s a problem. And it’s pretty clear that the Republicans can block most anything from getting through Congress, so you have to wonder, “What’s the point?”
On the other side, Hollywood and videogame makers will also oppose anything aimed in their direction, citing First Amendment concerns.
I’m not an NRA slippery-slope person. In fact, the only slippery slopes I see involve more and more guns, fewer and fewer restrictions, an ever-increasing saturation of violence in entertainment media, and more frequent mass shootings. That’s the reality of American society, clear for all to see. Do we want to keep going down those slippery slopes?
Come on, people, there’s common sense stuff we can do.
UPDATE: I read through all of the materials put out by the White House. I don’t see much cause for concern from gun owners. The president didn’t order up a new fleet of black helicopters to swoop in and confiscate everyone’s guns. Universal background checks are totally reasonable, and the Republic will not collapse if people’s gun magazines are limited to 10 bullets. A good share of the recommendations dealt with sharing of information between law enforcement agencies, school preparedness, and mental health issues (which will be real thorny).
On Piers Morgan, a woman gun rights advocate was asked, “Is there ANYTHING in what the president recommended that you agree with?” She said, “No.” That type of closed-mindedness drives me nuts.
Interesting tidbit from Joe Scarborough this morning. A couple years ago, idealistic Republicans turned down a great deal from President Obama–$1 in tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts. The other day, they settled for $43 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts.
It’s funny hearing Grover Norquist try to rationalize that Republicans didn’t actually vote for a tax increase. His whole existence is predicated on his famous no-tax pledge. If Republicans have now repudiated the pledge, Grover becomes irrelevant. So he’s trying to contort reality to convince people that his pledge is still in place, and he therefore counts.
Meanwhile…I wouldn’t want to be John Boehner right now. Everybody, right and left, is shooting at him.
And then, this gem from columnist Ezra Klein:
“What’s the record of the 112th Congress? Well, it almost shut down the government and almost breached the debt ceiling. It almost went over the fiscal cliff (which it had designed in the first place). It cut a trillion dollars of discretionary spending in the Budget Control Act and scheduled another trillion in spending cuts through an automatic sequester, which everyone agrees is terrible policy. It achieved nothing of note on housing, energy, stimulus, immigration, guns, tax reform, infrastructure, climate change or, really, anything. It’s hard to identify a single significant problem that existed prior to the 112th Congress that was in any way improved by its two years of rule.”
Can you spot the hidden minorities in this collage of the first 19 Republicans named as House committee chairpersons for the 113th Congress?
The Republicans have taken some shots recently for naming white men as chairmen of all of the House committees. Well, that’s not fair. After the criticism arose, they still had two slots to fill, and they found a white woman, Candice Miller of Michigan, to chair one of them–House Administration committee. John Boehner described this person’s responsibilities as “ensuring that the House runs efficiently and smoothly”–or, as Jon Stewart said, the “Housewife.”
Miller (right) had been a member of the larger and more prestigious Homeland Security committee, and a subcommittee chairperson, and she wanted to become its new chairman. Normally, you choose a chairperson from the persons who have been serving on that committee. But in picking a chairman for the House Administration committee, Boehner had to look outside the existing committee. But hey, at least they now have diversity in the committee chairpersons–19 white men, 1 white woman, and 1 more chairmanship to go.
Actually, the Republicans have more diversity in the current House (which serves until January). Currently, the House chairmanships include 1 woman and 1 hispanic. That would be 
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (right), a Cuban-American from Florida who chairs the important Foreign Affairs committee. She’s the ranking Republican woman in the House, serving since 1989. She had to give up her chairmanship because she had served her maximum of 6 years on the committee. Interestingly, they waived the limit for Paul Ryan so he could keep his chairmanship of the Budget committee. Since he’s a white guy, do different rules apply?
In addition to being a hispanic woman, Ros-Lehtinen is a minority in several other ways: she’s a Scientologist, she’s one of three Republican members of the LGBT caucus, and she was the first House Republican to suport same-sex marriage. Not, I’m assuming, a Tea Party favorite.
To be fair, the Republicans don’t have a lot of choices. Out of 235 members of the House, the Republicans have just 17 women, 1 black, and six hispanics. The Democrats alone have 61 women. In the 2012 elections, the Republicans lost 6 women, 1 black, and 1 hispanic. So their minority representation isn’t headed in the right direction.
John Boehner hasn’t yet named a chairperson of the Ethics committee (which, like Budget, has no subcommittees). I imagine he’s searching real hard for a woman or minority.
Anyway, here are the current (through January 2013) House committees, each of which has 2-13 subcommittees, each with their own chairpersons. I pointed out, with each committee, how many subcommittee chairpersons are non-Caucasian male. The Democrat line indicates not the chairperson, of course, but the ranking Democrat on the subcommittees. If you want to factcheck this, go to Wikipedia.
Agriculture (7 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 woman
Democrats: 3 hispanics, 1 black woman
Appropriations (13 sub-committees)
Republicans: 2 white women
Democrats: 2 women, 2 blacks, 1 hispanic, 1 asian
Armed Services (8 sub-committees)
Republicans: all white men
Democrats: 3 women, 2 hispanics
Education and Workforce (7 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 white woman
Democrats: 1 hispanic, 1 woman
Energy and Commerce (7 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 white woman
Democrats: 1 black, 2 women
Financial Services (7 sub-committees)
Republicans: 2 white women
Democrats: 3 women, 1 hispanic, 2 blacks
Foreign Affairs (8 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 hispanic woman
Democrats: 2 woman, 2 blacks
Homeland Security (7 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 white woman
Democrats: 4 blacks, 4 women, 1 hispanic
House Administration (2 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats: 1 white woman
Judiciary (6 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats: 3 black, 1 woman
Natural Resources (5 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats: 2 hispanics, 1 woman
Oversight and Government Reform (8 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats: 3 black men
Rules (2 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats:1 black man
Science, Space, and Technology (6 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats: 2 black women
Small Business (6 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 white woman
Democrats: 2 women, 1 asian, 1 black, 1 hispanic
Transportation and Infrastructure (7 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats: 2 black women
Veterans’ Affairs (5 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 white woman
Democrats: all white men
Ways and Mean (7 sub-committees)
Republicans: All white men
Democrats: 1 black, 1 hispanic
Intelligence (4 sub-committees)
Republicans: 1 woman
Democrats: 1 white woman
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Copyright © 2013 Steve Dennie | All rights reserved
