Texans Against Senator John Cornyn

Anyone else think it's time to see senator Cornyn removed as Texas representative? His recent support for the "fiscal cliff" compromise shows me that he enjoys spending other people's money and would rather see taxes increase so that he can continues to do without regard to that unsustainable path. Cornyn would rather ignore the realistic idea that cutting spending creases deficits, while raising taxes only increases the national debt. How can anyone so ignorant of economic principles be allowed to make fiscal choices on behalf of anyone else? There is nothing bipartisan about what politicians are doing today in regards to responsibility in government, and voting them out is one effective way to make a change in the state.

More:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Texans-Against-John-Cornyn

At least, with Cornyn and Pelosi holding hands-on this "compromise," we don't have to pass the billet see what's in it...

Despite being toosick to testify in front of Congress, Clinton traveled to the Dominican Republic for the New Year. Politics as usual...

http://thenavigatoronline.com/2012/12/29/hillary-clinton-so-sick-she-had-to-travel-to-punta-cana-resort-to-celebrate-the-new-year/

Simple Answers to Questions Posed To Imaginary Liberals

I noticed this expansion of the old vastleft strawman while reading deBoer's argument about how all liberals are secret torture apologists:

Here's my problem: for months prior to Election Day, many Democrats and liberals insisted that the position of the presidency was so vastly important that it was worth suspending certain moral and ethical principles in order to elect the better candidate. I don't want to rehash the wrongness or rightness of lesser evilism yet again. I'm just pointing out that this was the argument. And please note that the moral stakes simply could not have been higher; what was in argument were issues of literal life and death, of our stance towards the killing of innocent people. Retaining the presidency was so important that we had to put some of our most basic convictions on hold.

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More: Lawyers Guns Money

75 Percent of Obama’s Proposed Tax Hikes to Go Toward New Spending

The Swash calls it for what it is; 

Seventy-five percent of the new revenue pulled in by President Barack Obama's "fiscal cliff" plan would go toward new spending, not toward deficit reduction, the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee contends. Here's a chart, detailing how money from the new tax hikes would be distributed:

According to the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee, $1.2 trillion of the proposed $1.6 trillion in tax hikes would go toward new spending, while only $400 billion would go toward deficit reduction.

"The [president's] plan called for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, twice what the president asked for in the campaign. He asked for $800 billion during the campaign. Now he wants $1.6 trillion in new taxes," said Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, last week on the floor.

"Spending under that plan would increase $1 trillion above the levels agreed to in the Budget Control Act, as signed into law. We agreed to the Budget Control Act 16 months ago, in August 2011, and we raised the debt ceiling and agreed to reduce spending. We raised the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion and agreed to reduce spending $2.1 trillion. The President's plan would take out over $1.1 trillion of those spending limitations that are in current law. I repeat, spending will increase more than $1 trillion above the already projected growth in spending," Sessions added.

"Our spending is growing. It is not decreasing. It is already projected to grow, but the President's proposal is to have it grow even faster than the law currently calls for."

I'm not keen to side with one party over the other, but this is just ridiculous. Budgetary debates within government tend to focus on decreases in future spending rate increases, which is hardly cutting back. It's like saying you are not going to spend $100 in the future, only $97. Adjusting future projected spending rates are not the same as cutting spending when we need immediate cuts to keep things from grinding to a halt as a result of career politicians and their partisan politics, not that anything has or will change while either party has their hands around the necks of taxpayers...

Boehner says Obama is slow-walking fiscal cliff talks

Cuts, that's funny!

House Speaker John Boehner accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of slow-walking negotiations to avoid the "fiscal cliff" and urged him to name specific cuts in government spending he would support as part of any compromise.

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Source

Handwriting on the wall for Susan Rice

The Benghazi attack gets more convoluted through the political games as time marches on:

Why would the New York Times choose to publish an attack on Susan Rice ("a surprising and unsettling sympathy for Africa's despots") in its Sunday edition? The Times turned over prized op-ed real state to Salem Solomon ("an Eritrean-American journalist who runs Africa Talks, a news and opinion Web site covering Africa and the global African diaspora"), who signaled the UN Ambassador that a nomination to be Secretary of State would not be a bed of roses. Just in case she felt that going on those five Sunday shows and playing a meat puppet mouthing whatever she was told to say about Benghazi deserves some sort of reward.

I see it as a sign that President Obama has decided that confirmation hearings for Rice would be so politically costly that he would be better served by another nominee. Right now, it appears that former Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, is being test marketed. Rice is getting the message indirectly that her reward for loyalty is being deferred.

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American Thinker

Obama: Give Me Debt Ceiling Power Or I’ll Veto My Own Tax Proposal

In case there is still anyone out there that continues to believe that the 2008 campaign lines that Barack Obama gave about changing the way Washington works, stopping “politics as usual,” and providing more transparency in government are true, then get a load of this. On Wednesday, Obama demonstrated just how partisan and how much of a power grabber he is. He indicated that if he were not given unlimited powers to raise the debt ceiling, apart from Congressional approval, that he might just veto his own tax hike proposal should it come to his desk.

As Obama addressed corporate CEOs at the Business Roundtable, he told them that business leaders “should not accept going through” another debt-ceiling crisis like the one that occurred in 2011, which caused stocks to fall and ended with the first U.S. credit rating downgrade.

He said that the Republicans using the debt ceiling as leverage, in order to get more spending cuts, is not only a “bad strategy for America,” but he was adamant that it was a game he would not play.

More: Obama: Give Me Debt Ceiling Power Or I’ll Veto My Own Tax Proposal

Right-wing Fails to Learn from History and Gives Lead to the Left

In December 2010, I wrote that "An indicator of the incoming House Republican majority's seriousness about cutting spending will be which members the party selects to head the various committees." The final roster ended up leaving a lot to be desired from a limited government perspective. For example, the House Republican leadership and its allies went with "The Prince of Pork" to head up the Appropriations Committee.

Two years later, the committee situation is about to get even worse now that the House Republican leadership has decided to send a message that casting a vote according to one's beliefs instead of one's instructions is a punishable offense. On Monday, four congressmen were booted from "plum" committee assignments for failing to sufficiently tow the leadership line. I suspect that the purge was motivated, at least in part, by Team Boehner's desire to have the rest of the rank and file think twice before casting a "no" vote on whatever lousy deal is struck with the White House to avoid the "fiscal cliff."

Three of the purged Republicans are returning members of the 2010 freshmen "Tea Party Class": Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Justin Amash (R-MI), and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS). Over the past year, I have been keeping a loose record of how the freshmen voted on opportunities to eliminate programs and prevent spending increases. On seven particularly telling votes*, Schweikert and Amash voted in favor of limited government every time. Out of 87 freshmen, only Schweikert, Amash, and five others had a perfect record. Huelskamp was six for seven. He also was one of only four Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee to vote against the bloated farm bill that passed out of the committee in July. The fourth outcast, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), had become an irritant to the Republican establishment after turning against the Iraq War and associating himself with more libertarian Republicans like Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).

More: With Purge, GOP Leadership Reaches New Low

While this looks to be a serious setback for right-wing fascism in the fight to control the state with left-wing socialism, either way we are screwed. Whether one party or the other (or one half of the single party system) gains control of the state is not entirely significant, as individuals in either paradigm are working toward authoritarian systems of government that have been tried and failed throughout history, but why bother learning from history? Or maybe it's more like a horse race, where the winner is fixed before the race begins...